09MAY2008 "Adventures of the Dumb Lucky - As told by Wendy"

Two days ago, Patrick got bitten by a snake. So did Suki. In fairness to the snake, Patrick did try to pick it up,.. three times... before the snake bit him. (He misidentified it in the dark as a mole snake. It turned out to be a mole viper.) After it bit him, I made him kill it with a machete and put it in a container to take with us. His finger started to swell within seconds. We drove to the hospital where they apparently have no anti-venom and they gave Patrick a tetanus shot. Very helpful. Patrick's boss came to meet us at the hospital and we poured over the snake book to try to identify our severed snake. We were pretty sure we IDed him as one whose bite was "extremely painful but with no known fatalities" but it also looked very similar to the "deadly" one. 99% sure wasn’t good enough. Patrick remained pretty calm through the whole thing, holding his finger in the air and trying not to move too fast to prevent the venom from circulating. I kept swearing at him for being such an idiot. He took that pretty well also. I called the snake farm run by some snake nutsos about an hour from us while Rob drove the snake to the snake farm for an expert ID. The snake expert was very reassuring: "You did the right thing, called the right people...its a rare snake, but if its the one you described, then its not deadly... but if its not, then its quite likely deadly... but I'm sure its the non-deadly one. I've been bitten by that one several times and its VERY painful so expect to be in a lot of pain. We're not worried about his life, now we just need to focus on saving his finger... " OK. Right.

The snake expert recommended staying in the hospital overnight for observation, but staying the night in Kilifi hospital for observation is a bit of a joke. You have to have a severed head to get any attention. I took Patrick home to pop him full of ibuprofen and keep an eye on him myself. When we arrived home we found a feverish Suki hopping around on three paws with the fourth swollen like a balloon. By that time we knew that our ID of the snake had been confirmed, but there was also no anti-venom so Patrick was going to live, Suki would also likely live and there was nothing we could do anyway. I tucked them both in bed to keep them under close observation.

While we were hanging around the hospital, a car full of car accident victims came into the emergency bay. As soon as they walked in, the whole place filled with the odor of booze. In their drunken hurry to get their wounded comrades to the ER, they rear-ended our car in the parking lot.

Never thought I'd be sitting in a hospital in rural Kenya with my husband waiting to find out if he would live or die from a snakebite... Hope you are having as many adventures, but less close to the life and death mark.