You may want to watch your step a little more closely in some areas of South Dakota. That’s because you may come across a rattlesnake. If you do, what should you do? And if you get bitten, what’s the next step? That’s what happened to one young boy.
10-year-old Aden Harer was running outside when he came across an unexpected visitor.
“Right after I got to the fence post, I heard something in the grass so I looked over and before I could do anything to react, it bit me,” said 10-year-old Aden.
He immediately ran inside to tell his mom.
“Of course, I said, ‘what did it look like?’ and he told me it was green with diamonds, then I pretty much knew that it was probably a rattlesnake,” said Aden’s mom, Carrie Harer. “Honestly, the rattlesnake situation was my worst fear. I had to work to calm myself back down because I was getting lightheaded thinking of ‘what do I do, how do I get him there,’ I just knew time was of the essence and a situation where we needed the antivenom.”
They both got in the car and headed to the hospital in Gettysburg.
“I was taking call that day. I came in and in my initial evaluation, he was doing pretty well, all he really complained of was pain where the bite had occurred which was in his leg,” said physician assistant, Avera Medical Group Gettysburg, KaraLynn Kuhn.
“It felt like getting an IV put in, but into your shin, and then it felt like fire,” Aden said.
“With rattlesnake bites, antivenom is the mainstay of treatment. The most important thing is to do a good initial evaluation of the patient, get a good baseline, how are they right now, is that going to change in 15 minutes. When he first came in he was only complaining of pain where the bite occurred, and then he started to feel a little sick, he was getting hot, got a little clammy and sweaty and then he vomited a couple times. So then you start worrying like ‘OK, I need to get on the phone, talk to Pierre,’ he’s probably going to need some more attention,” said Kuhn.
That prompted them to take an ambulance to the Gettysburg airport to get on Avera Careflight to go to Pierre.
“He looked fairly OK, a little pale, we did a quick assessment right in the ambulance and then quickly put him inside of our aircraft,” said registered nurse, Avera Careflight, Heidi Kostas. “With pediatric patients, being a mom myself, I know how scary it can be to have to put your child in an aircraft and then be taken somewhere so I was really grateful that Carrie was able to ride with us and kind of give her peace of mind and keep her up to date and sit next to her and let her know that Aden was going to be OK.”
A scary situation that had a positive outcome thanks to teamwork.
“I’m thankful. I think in our situation it turned out the best possible outcome we could have had given the resources in town and we were able to get more resources and that was in Pierre and luckily at that point he had no further reactions so we were able to just spend two more nights in ICU to watch him,” Carrie said.
“A rattlesnake bite can be life threatening and had he stayed there they probably could have got him here but we were able to speed up that transport so he could get the care he needed,” said Kostas.
