A San Diego woman’s peaceful morning gardening session ended with avenomous visitor, a trip to the ER and a crash course in whyrattlesnake season is no joke.
Diane Distefano was elbow-deep in her University City backyard garden when she felt something bite her.
“And you know, I’m not thinking of anything. I’m just reaching around pulling out the milkweed, and I couldn’t see my hand,” Distefano toldCBS 8.
“And within an hour, I was back inside the house, and I noticed these two wounds that had started to get a bluish-red color and were raised. And kind of looked like a snake bite.”
Distefano raced to Kaiser Clairemont Mesa Hospital while piecing together the clues.
“Pit vipers or vipers, like rattlesnakes, of which we have a lot of; they make the puncture wound,” she told outlet. “The puncture wounds were not very far apart. So, it’s kind of like a process of elimination.”
The culprit turned out to be a young rattlesnake.
Doctors called it a “dry bite” — the snake struck, but no venom was delivered.
Dr. William Woo of Kaiser Permanente said that this is the outcome in roughly 25% of bites.
“So, assuming that this is a poisonous snake or a venomous snake, what we’ll do is we will observe the local area of the bite,” he told CBS 8. “We’re looking for tissue damage, bruising, spreading of these signs, and even changes in blood work.”
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
