Video: Arizona Man Bitten in Face by Rattlesnake He Wanted to Grill; Says it’s Not the First Time
OutdoorHub Reporters 09.18.17
A man in Arizona was showing off for his friends and ended up spending five days in the hospital and kept heavily sedated to treat multiple bites from a rattlesnake.
USA Today reports Victor Pratt, 48, was trying to entertain his friends at a party by catching and cooking a rattlesnake that crawled into his yard. He wrestled with the snake for a bit, and posed for several photos with it, but suddenly lost his grip on the snake’s head, and it turned and landed multiple bites.
Pratt was bit once on chest and once on the face, and he knew right away he was in grave danger.
Having experience in rattlesnake bites from when he was 19, Pratt said, “we gotta go [to the hospital] now.”
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, which doctors said definitely saved his life.
“If an airway is not established in the first few minutes, in our experience less than 15 to 30 minutes, then those patients really don’t have a chance to survive,” said Dr. Steven Curry, Banner hospital’s toxicology director.
Curry said the importance of inserting a tube in the patients airway is even more urgent with face bites.
“If they can get their airway established, they’re very lucky,” Curry said. “That is, you’re lucky to have been bitten and been able to make it to the hospital in just a few minutes in order to have those emergency procedures done that are needed to save your life.”
Pratt says in all, he lost five days of memory and “didn’t know where I was for five days.”
He says the important thing to take away from his story, is how important it is to seek medical care as quickly as possible, noting specifically that home remedies are a mistake.
“First-aid measures such as tourniquets, ice, incisions or taking the time to apply suctions. . . are dangerous and harmful, or just completely ineffective, as is the case of suction.”
