What would you do if a Mozambique Spitting Cobra latched onto your finger while in bed at a swanky five-star lodge in Africa… hundreds of kilometres from emergency assistance?
Johannesburg, South Africa (18 August 2017) – Nick Evans recently met and chatted with a very interesting man. He had a horrifying story to tell about an encounter he had with a Mozambique Spitting Cobra!
A snake that is considered one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa. Its venom is about as toxic as the American Mojave rattlesnake, considered the world’s most venomous rattlesnake. Like the rinkhals, it can spit its venom, and its bite causes severe local tissue destruction (similar to the puff adder’s).
Here’s a summary of what happened:
Early last year, the South African man went on holiday to a five-star lodge in the Kruger.
At around 9 pm, he went off to bed. He lay down and put his hands behind his head. As he did this, he felt a snake latch onto his middle finger of his right hand!
The snake was curled up behind his pillow!
He flung his arm forward, hoping to throw the snake off, but it didn’t work. As he did this, the snake wrapped its tail around his left arm.
“They typically do this if grabbed, in case they need to pull there head out of danger, or to avoid being dragged off.”
So once he flung his arm forward, and because the snake’s tail was wrapped around his other arm, it turned and latched onto his left hand. It bit down and held on. The man was now standing up, arms held out in front of him, snake attached.
Seeing the snake latched onto him sent him into shock, and he was frozen; he couldn’t react. The snake was holding firmly onto his head, pumping venom in. The worst-case scenario!
“It eventually dropped off onto his feet and moved off. He could see clearly that it was a Mozambique Spitting Cobra. He called his wife and the staff. Not one of the staff members knew what to do, who to call, or where the nearest hospital was. 5 star lodge?”
He applied a tourniquet to each arm, the wrong thing to do for a cytotoxic envenomation.
His wife drove him out of the park and met a government ambulance on the side of the road (which they had managed to call whilst on the way out). The ambulance didn’t even have a drip, so he was later offloaded into a private ambulance. At around 11 pm, he finally arrived at a government hospital.
Within half an hour of the bite, he had started vomiting what he described as black goo, and his hands had swollen up.
The hospital was understaffed, so they taught the patient’s wife how to read the monitoring screen. Can you believe it?!
“The next morning, his urine was almost black in colour, and he said he could see what looked like bits of tissue in it. Later that day, at lunch time, was the first time that a nurse had attended to him. Infuriated by the shocking service and facilities, his wife had to fight to get him moved to the nearest private hospital, which then turned out to be full!”
After four days, the doctors conducted a fasciotomy to relieve the swelling. The tissue damage thus far was horrendous.
You could see the tendons in his hands. Whilst doing this, they inserted a sponge connected to a vacuum pipe to get rid of the rotten tissue. This was excruciatingly painful!
Six days after the bite, his middle finger was amputated, even after receiving antivenom.
It took an entire year for him to regain the movement of his hand. During the early stages of that time, he was resuscitated three times. Surprisingly, the permanent damage on his left arm was minimal.
“This was as exceptionally bad case. As he said to me, everything that could’ve gone wrong, did. The bite, no one knowing what to do immediately afterwards, poor healthcare etc. It was one big disaster, which he managed to pull through.”
He holds no grudges against snakes and doesn’t even fear them. One bit of advice he had to share was that if you’re going out into the bush, have plans in place in case of an emergency. Phone the lodge/camp to see if they have emergency plans and know where the nearest hospital is.
Also, it’s probably a good idea to check your bed before sleeping in the bush!
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