A 3-year-old girl’s excitement when she picked up an Amazon package addressed to her in her rural Santa Clarita home turned to fear last week when she picked it up and became the latest Californian to be bitten by a rattlesnake.
On July 13, an Amazon package was delivered to the Barajas family home of 3-year-old Addy.
According to the GoFundMe page, when Addy saw the package, she ran to it, excited to open the gift.
“Unfortunately, a southern pacific rattlesnake was hiding under a brown envelope and bit Addy’s left hand,” the family wrote on the fundraising page.
After the bite, Addy’s mother rushed her to the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, where they met an ambulance that took the child to a local hospital, the child’s father, Manuel, told KTLA.
At the hospital, Addy was given a dose of antivenin, and then transferred to another medical facility that had an intensive care unit. There, she received two more doses of antivenin within two days, according to GoFundMe, which will help cover Addy’s medical expenses and the family’s lost income from Manuel’s unemployment. The girl is expected to survive.
This incident was the latest this year which shows that he is busy with rattlesnake bites.
Why has rattlesnake season been so busy
Ingcwethi said that the unseasonably warm weather at the beginning of the year has shown the snakes to leave their winter residences in need of food and matings, which has increased the crowding of people at the beginning of the year.
Rattlesnake season is typically April through October, and California reports an average of between 290 and 390 bites per year, according to the California Poison Control System.
But so far this year, 277 bites have been reported in California, along with several deaths. Rais Vohra, medical director of the state’s poison control program, says the reported bites may not represent all snakes because the agency relies on voluntary reporting from the public and health workers.
Before Addy’s scare, the most recent high-profile rattlesnake incident in California occurred in Butte County, where a man visiting Idaho was bitten twice and hospitalized for 12 days. His treatment involved receiving 54 vials of antivenin.
Here’s how antivenin works
Rattlesnake bites are treatable, and for the best outcome for a bitten person, Vohra said, that person should be given antivenin as soon as possible.
This is because when a snake bites and pierces the skin and transfers its venom to the human body, the venom attacks the skin, soft tissue and connective tissue underneath.
The result can be swelling, bruising, bleeding, blisters and skin discoloration. If left untreated, a rattlesnake bite can eventually lead to death.
Antivenom “doesn’t automatically heal the damage that has already occurred, but it can slow or stop the progression of tissue damage, which is our goal whenever we treat these patients in the emergency room and hospital,” Vohra said.
On average, a bitten patient may need 15 to 20 vials of antivenin.
The number of bottles of antivenin that a hospital carries is different for each location. Cedars-Sinai told The Times in a statement that it usually stores enough vials to treat a handful of patients at any one time.
“When we have complex cases where a patient needs additional anti-toxic treatment, we have used existing protocols to obtain additional doses from our providers,” the statement said.
At Providence’s 11 Southern California medical centers, it currently has a combined 167 containers on hand.
Providing a patient with additional vials of antivenin depends on several factors, including the inflammation of the bite site, the patient’s pain level and blood work results, Vohra said.
“As poison control professionals, we try to be as scientific as possible, and we look for specific ways to re-administer that antivenin because it’s an expensive resource and we understand that hospitals have limited amounts,” he said. “We want to be able to be responsible stewards of this precious resource but also ensure that the patient receives the best treatment.”
In California, two FDA-approved antivenin products, CroFab and Anavip, are available in hospitals, which can provide them to patients in need.
Antivenom is produced by administering a small dose of harvested venom to a sheep or horse, which causes the animal’s immune system to develop antibodies. The scientists then turned that blood into human antivenin.
