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Snake bite doesn’t rattle Berwyn farmer |
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Thursday, 04 September 2008 |
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 Kirk Foster hopped back on his bike and rode two miles back to his house after being struck by a rattlesnake in a ditch while checking rain gauges. He spent four days in the hospital.
By MICHELLE ZLOMKE
Chief Managing Editor
BERWYN -- Kirk Foster’s family has made just a few adjustments since being bitten by a rattlesnake last month.
They mow the grass around the house a little shorter. He keeps a more watchful eye when he is out on his property. And they got a set of snake guards for 13-year-old daughter, Kelsey, to wear when she is out helping him.
But Foster said he still isn’t intimidated by snakes. He didn’t kill the one that struck him, and he’s been back to the area where he got bitten and has seen other snakes there, albeit no more rattlers.
“If you play the odds, you don’t worry about a snake bite that much because it doesn’t happen very often,” he said.
The incident occurred about two miles south of the Foster home near Berwyn. Foster had gone out to check and empty rain gauges.
He stepped off his motorcycle and into a ditch to get to the gauge on a fence.
“I heard a rattlesnake that was between my legs almost,” he said. “I jumped back to walk around him and stopped to look at him and I felt the bite of the other one.”
The snake bit Foster in the shin, just above the top of his boots, sinking its fangs in through his denim jeans.
“The snakes were both about four feet long,” Foster said. “The distance between the fangs of the one that got me was an inch and a quarter.”
Foster said he knew he had been bitten, so got on his motorcycle and went to his house to get his wife, Denise.
He called 911 emergency services to let them know he was coming to Jennie M. Melham Medical Center.
A police car met Foster and his wife at the city limits.
“I started feeling symptoms in about 20 minutes,” Foster said. “And probably about half-way to town I started feeling nauseous and not quite right.”
By the time he reached the emergency room at Melham Medical Center, he said his extremities were becoming numb.
It was there that he received his first dose of anti-venom. He also learned that further doses would be necessary, so he would be transported to Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney by helicopter.
“I got to feeling pretty good by the time I got on the helicopter,” Foster said. “But then I got about half-way to Kearney and started feeling really bad.”
He described his symptoms as nausea, numbness, shakiness and difficulty moving his lips to speak.
Foster spent the next two days in an intensive care unit. On the third day, he was moved to a regular patient room in Kearney and allowed to get out of bed with a walker.
He was dismissed from the hospital four days after being bitten.
“It took about a week for the swelling to go down. They said to expect it to take two months to get back to normal,” Foster said. “I’m probably at 95 percent now. It’s still a little tender, but there’s no limit to the functionality.”
The couple has four daughters, Jamie, Kelsey, Audrey and Lexie. Foster said Kelsey is the one most likely to spend time working by his side. She wasn’t with him when he got bitten.
“Quite often Kelsey goes out with me and if she had gotten bit, it would have been different,” he said. “She doesn’t have as much body mass as me and it would have been a lot worse.”
Foster, who said he doesn’t kill snakes, stands by that practice. Instead of fearing the reptiles, he continues to appreciate the creatures.
“They were two of the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen,” he said. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 11 September 2008 )
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