CASTLE HILLS, Texas – A Castle Hills woman who was reaching for a dog toy in her backyard ended up spending two days in the intensive care unit after she was bit by a snake.
Oriana Knight said she was bit in the same yard where her 3-year-old child and her dog play every day.
“As soon as something bit, it was sharp, and I jerked back. I was looking at it,” she said. “I looked down and I heard the rattling.”
She immediately called her husband to get a ride to the hospital. In the 30 minutes it took to get there, her arm turned red and had a blister, and the pain was spreading up.
“When I got there, I was starting to have palpitations,” Knight, a nurse by trade, said. “I was very sweaty and super nauseous.”
Knight had to take about a dozen vials of anti-venom.
Experts say the majority of snakebites happen in a person’s own home. The Texas Poison Center Network said there were more than 700 venomous snakebites in 2016.
Allan Kardon, with the San Antonio Zoo, said there are about 30 different snakes native to the region. Of those, the broad-banded copperhead, Texas coral snake, western diamondback rattlesnake, black tail rattlesnake and cottonmouth, or water moccasin, are venomous.
“You will know it immediately. That venom affects the blood system. You get intense, burning pain. You can get blister swelling that radiate via the area,” Kardon said.
Call 911 immediately or have someone drive you to the nearest hospital if you are bitten.
Use “a light wrap, maybe a splint, keeping your hand (and) arm above your heart,” Kardon said.
Knight is fine now, but she’s warning others to be on the lookout for venomous snakes.