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To be bitten by a rattlesnake: 'After tracking
them every day in the field for so many years, I'd had a lot of close calls,
but I never let my guard down and I always treated them with a lot of
respect.' Michel Villeneuve, snake-bite victim Series: What It Feels
Like...:[National Edition] |
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Author(s): |
Allen
Abel |
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Article
types: |
Interview;
Series |
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Column
Name: |
What It Feels Like... |
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Section: |
News |
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Publication
title: |
National
Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Jun 28, 2001. pg. A.16 |
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Source
Type: |
Newspaper |
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ProQuest
document ID: |
245341101 |
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Text
Word Count |
1713 |
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Article
URL: |
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Abstract (Article Summary) |
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National Post
writer Allen Abel recently spoke to 12 unusual Canadians. In the fourth part
of his series, he talks to [Michel Villeneuve], 47, the former senior warden
at Georgian Bay Islands National Park in Ontario. Mr. Villeneuve was bitten
by an Eastern massasauga rattlesnake (the only venomous snake in Eastern
Canada) in August, 1999, on Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay Islands. Today,
Mr. Villeneuve is national public-safety specialist with Parks Canada. So we do snake
No. 1. You pin the snake behind the head with a snake hook, then just quickly
grab the snake's head to prevent it from opening its mouth, and with the
other hand you grab the body. Within a few
weeks, everything about me is changed. I'm a long- distance runner, a
marathoner. But I have increasing weakness and shortness of breath, and I'm
finding it difficult to get out of bed. A mild depression is setting in. I go
to my doctor and he discovers that my thyroid gland has completely shut down.
Is it from the bite, the antivenin? Nobody knows. There's never been a
long-term follow- up study of snake-bite victims. |
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Full Text (1713 words) |
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(Copyright National Post 2001) Have you been
shot by bank robbers? Been attacked by a pit bull? Lost 300 pounds? Had an
incredible experience of any sort? Please tell us about it at
www.nationalpost.com/feelslike National Post
writer Allen Abel recently spoke to 12 unusual Canadians. In the fourth part
of his series, he talks to Michel Villeneuve, 47, the former senior warden at
Georgian Bay Islands National Park in Ontario. Mr. Villeneuve was bitten by
an Eastern massasauga rattlesnake (the only venomous snake in Eastern Canada)
in August, 1999, on Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay Islands. Today, Mr.
Villeneuve is national public-safety specialist with Parks Canada. --- I figure I'd
handled six or seven hundred Eastern massasauga rattlesnakes in my 20 years
on Georgian Bay. We get 30 or 40 of them in the campgrounds and on the trails
every summer, and since we were picking up these specimens all the time, we
would gather data from them -- size, weight, age, male or female, that kind
of thing, then release them back into the park. I guess it's
ironic that my biggest role at Georgian Bay Islands was prevention, teaching
others how to use our understanding of rattlesnake biology to avoid them and
avoid bites. After tracking them every day in the field for so many years,
I'd had a lot of close calls, but I never let my guard down and I always
treated them with a lot of respect. The day it
happened was a nice sunny day in August. We had several snakes in the office
to be processed, snakes that had been found to be in conflict with human use
in the park. There was another warden with me (we always work in pairs). We
were going to examine them and then release them on the island. So we do snake
No. 1. You pin the snake behind the head with a snake hook, then just quickly
grab the snake's head to prevent it from opening its mouth, and with the
other hand you grab the body. But No. 2 is a
small snake -- about a one-year-old snake. With little snakes, you have to be
extra alert. They're faster, and if you don't pin the head properly, they
twist and there's a danger of them breaking their spine. I reach down,
and just as I get behind the snake's head, the snake slides away from the
snake hook and while it's recoiling, it turns around and manages to barely
hit me with one fang about a quarter-inch above the fingernail on my right
index finger. It feels like
a very small needle prick in my finger. Immediately, I look at my finger to
see if there's any blood. This is the very tense moment. So as I'm looking at
my finger, holding it up, I see a tiny little bead of blood. I say,
"S---!" and I tell the warden I'm working with, "I've been
bitten." His reaction
is, "You're kidding!" So what
happens when I see the blood, my next concern is whether the snake has
injected its poison in me or not (30% of bites tend to be "dry
bites" in which they don't inject venom). Some biologists believe that
the Eastern massasauga may consciously be able to withhold its venom, to
conserve it, but very young snakes may not have that ability. I sit down and
try to remain calm. I want to see if there's anything going on with my hand.
This is the anxious time: After about a minute, yeah, I feel a slight
tingling at the bite site, just a very gradual numbing tingling, but very
slow and very gradual. So I inform the warden that I've been envenomated. My first
thoughts are that I feel embarrassed, because of my level of expertise and my
confidence in handling the snakes. My second thoughts are to the possible
damage to the reputation of the warden program and the park itself. And then
my third thought is evacuation. We drive to
the boat, but we don't alert anybody. There's no panic -- usually, if you can
get treatment within six or eight hours of being bitten, that's enough time.
It's five kilometres by boat to Honey Harbour, and then about 50 kilometres
to the hospital in Midland by car. On the way, I stop in at home to get an
overnight bag, because I know I'm going to be in the hospital overnight, and
I tell my wife that I've been envenomated and her jaw just drops. The tingling
has now spread to my thumb and the throbbing is intensifying. There is
swelling of the index finger and thumb. But I don't have the excruciating
pain that some people report after a bite -- they say it feels like they're
being pounded with a sledgehammer. During the car
ride to the hospital, the tingling has turned into low-grade throbbing and my
hand has swollen quite a bit. I am checking my pulse constantly. I know how
important it is to remain calm, to keep the heart from pumping the venom
faster. I tell the warden who's driving me to take it slow and not do
anything stupid. At the
hospital, the whole team is there and ready. They set me up in bed and
they're prepping me for IVs, sampling blood, monitoring my heart rate; people
are shaving my chest and putting discs on me, and the doctor is explaining
what the procedure will be. They don't
give the antivenin right away. They wait to see if you really need it. So
we're in evaluation mode for about 45 minutes. The blood samples are showing
that the envenomation is proceeding. When it reaches about the elbow, that's
when the decision is made. By this time,
there's hemorrhaging that's starting to occur in my finger and hand, and
there's throbbing, but it's not severe. I'd describe it as light to moderate.
I'm thinking, "My system has been penetrated and invaded by a very toxic
poison. Can my system fight this off?" They mix the
antivenin into an IV bag and I get five units. I'm distressed by the fact
that I'm not able to fight this off myself, but I accept the medical
intervention. They keep monitoring my condition, evaluating my
"vitals." They move me out of Emergency, into Intensive Care. Now I'm
getting really sleepy. At 9, I go to sleep, and by 11 at night the process of
envenomation seems to be reversing itself. I get a good night's sleep, and by
morning, my blood count's back to normal and by lunch time, I'm discharged. I take a
couple of days off, I'm continuing to feel OK and I go back to work and I'm
working with rattlesnakes again. Then, about three days later, I start
experiencing some excruciating joint pain in my legs to the point where I can
barely walk. My ankles have
swollen quite a bit, and I have a slight rash that resembles poison ivy. I'm
feeling really unwell -- like a total body slam. I go to bed, and the next
morning I wake up to my wife saying, "Oh my God!" I look at
myself and I'm totally swollen up and covered in a huge crimson red rash all
over my body. My wedding-ring finger has gone blue; the circulation has been
cut off completely. The entire surface of my skin hurts as a result of the
tension of the stretching. So the same
process begins again. We pull into the hospital and I'm assaulted by a team
of medical people. Except this time, it's clear that I'm having a severe
reaction to the antivenin, and it's clear that they have never seen this
before. Doctors are phoning other doctors and I hear them describing my rash. Now I'm
feeling anxious. I'm having problems breathing. My sense of touch is
unnatural. It's very disturbing. Blankets and sheets on me are an irritation.
The nursing staff is voicing concern about the nature and colour of my rash.
I'd describe it as red and bumpy like a sumac fruit. They
immediately give me antihistamines and relaxants and a large dose of
steroids, not the anabolic kind. After 24 hours, my condition gets worse and
I sense a real concern from the medical team. So they have to increase the
dosage of steroids, and I just remember everything going whitewash -- my
whole presence is whitewashed in colour, whitewashed in sense, whitewashed in
touch, whitewashed in sight. This lasts a
couple of days. On Day 3, the
whole event begins to reverse itself -- the rash, the swelling and my state
of awareness. On the sixth day, I'm released. The doctor says that another
bite would be fatal, and so would another dose of the antivenin. So I have
career decisions to make. Within a few
weeks, everything about me is changed. I'm a long- distance runner, a marathoner.
But I have increasing weakness and shortness of breath, and I'm finding it
difficult to get out of bed. A mild depression is setting in. I go to my
doctor and he discovers that my thyroid gland has completely shut down. Is it
from the bite, the antivenin? Nobody knows. There's never been a long-term
follow- up study of snake-bite victims. So I have to
leave Georgian Bay Island National Park and take a desk job. We move to
Ottawa with our children. Two years later, the best I can do is struggle
through a five-kilometre run. I still have hormonal problems. I always had
the highest respect for the Eastern massasauga rattlesnake. I view it right
now in exactly the same way. I'm saddened that I can't get close to them
anymore. I'm saddened that I can't go back and enjoy Georgian Bay, which I
loved so much for 20 years. At least I'm
still able to enjoy the outdoors, up here in shield country. And we do have
other snakes, non-venomous ones, of course. I love black rat snakes. There's
nothing like a nice eight-foot snake that you can wrap around your neck!
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