Man tries to eat rattlesnake; gets bit
An Arizona man was hospitalized after surviving a rattlesnake bite to the face while trying to show off to friends at a party by attempting to cook the reptile on a barbecue grill.
Victor Pratt, 48, was bitten Sept. 7. He was first treated at a hospital near his Coolidge home and then transferred to Banner-University Medical Center in Phoenix. Coolidge is nearly 60 miles from Phoenix.
While celebrating his child’s birthday with friends, Pratt said he decided to show them how to catch and cook a rattlesnake after one of the reptiles showed up in his yard during the party.
Pratt grabbed the venomous snake and was showing it off to friends and family, posing for several photos. But he lost his grip on the snake’s head, and it attacked him.
After being bitten twice, once on the chest and once on the face, Pratt said he knew immediately that something was wrong, having been bitten once before when he was 19.
“I said, ‘We gotta go now,’ be- cause I knew what was going to happen,” Pratt said.
He was taken immediately to a local hospital, which doctors said saved his life. He also has received doses of antivenom.
“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.
“I lost five days of memory,” Pratt said. “I didn’t know where I was for five days.”
This kind of memory loss is common, Curry said, because the drugs needed to keep a pa- tient under prevent memories from forming. For their own safety, patients with face bites are kept heavily sedated, and have their hands wrapped in large, bulky bandages to prevent them from pulling out the endotracheal tube.
Curry said seeking medical care quickly is critical.
“First-aid measures such as tourniquets, ice, incisions or taking the time to apply suctions ... are dangerous and harmful,” he said. “Or completely ineffective, as in the case of suction.”
Pratt, is done with venomous reptiles. “Ain’t gonna play with snakes no more,” he said.