[Island Packet] The first bite felt like a bee sting.Susan Conlin O’Neil was walking home from dinner to her Hilton Head Island condo Wednesday night when she took a step down on the sidewalk and felt a pang in her heel.
It was really no big deal. She said to her friends, "something got me!"
Then the second bite came.
And the third.
O’Neil was bitten three times by a copperhead snake on the sidewalk outside her South Forest Beach home. The second two bites were nothing like the first, which she determined was a "dry bite" where the snake injected no venom into her body.
"It felt like someone stuck an electric knife in my leg, like a volt of electricity," she told The Island Packet of the second and third bites. "The pain went up my leg."
O’Neil, who has lived on the island for 27 years, knew she had to get a photo of the culprit and get to the hospital. But in the moments after the bites, all that went out the window.
"One of my biggest problems after the bite was panic: ’What got me? What do I need to do? What’s the immediate first aid? How do I know what kind of snake it was?’" she said. "I’m an RN who’s retired but I spent 20 years in the ER in Chicago. And I panicked."
O’Neil’s friends got her to Hilton Head Hospital, where she was treated for the bite.
But the swelling overtook her left leg below the knee, and the symptoms were making her miserable.
Skipping down to the 'what to do' if bitten:
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE BITTEN BY A SNAKE
Patrick Snowman, an ER physician at Hilton Head Hospital, said the best way to handle a snake bite is to avoid getting one in the first place. He said you should never try to pick up or handle a snake, and that you should never step somewhere you can’t see.
"Hilton Head light pollution sensitivity creates a lot of dark spots, you need to be able to see where you’re stepping," he said.
Snowman handles about 15 to 20 snake bites per year as an overnight ER physician.
If you are bitten by a coppherhead, the bite will be immediately painful, and symptoms will begin soon after the bite. Symptoms include swelling, pain, shock, nausea, tingling and numbness and anaphylaxis.
It’s important to get medical treatment at the nearest emergency room immediately, because bites can get serious if they’re not treated quickly.
You shouldn’t try lacerate the bite or try to extract the venom, Snowman said. He added that ice also is not very effective in snake-bite cases.
Here’s what Snowman recommend doing — and not doing — after a snake bite:
The late Ross Allen, another Florida herpetologist some here may remember.