I got bit on my little toe by a copperhead Thursday evening. I went to the ER but didn’t need any serious treatment other than pain meds. It hurt like hell but by morning my foot didn’t hurt as long as I kept it elevated to hip level and didn’t bump it into anything.
Since then things haven’t changed much. Every day the sensitivity to pain from bumping or putting a bit of weight on my heel is lower, but the swelling is pretty consistent (my foot, up to but not past my ankle, especially on the side of the bite).
Any suggestions on how to heal as fast as possible? Crutches are a nuisance.
The obvious: drink plenty of water, get plenty of rest, and keep my foot elevated. I’m also taking a bit of ibuprofen, though I haven’t been consistent about that (I should probably take one 200mg tab every 4 hrs). I’m avoiding very salty food.
Any other tips? I’m interested in anything: science, of course, but also Grandma’s remedies, rumor, innuendo, and even blatant lies, as long as they’re funny. Homeopathic suggestions will be ignored, as they should be. Unless they’re funny, of course.
The good news is the snake got me and not my dog. I’d have had a lot more stress if it had been my little pal! Also, it wasn’t very serious as copperhead bites go, and copperhead bites are generally not very serious. Just painful and a damned nuisance.
Antivenin is horrible stuff. I’m not sure about snake bites, but when I was bit by a black widow, my physician and I decided to forgo the expense and side effects.
According to my nurse, who is evidently the area expert who trains other nurses (and is a snake keeper himself), the antivenom is very expensive, and it’s not necessary unless the reaction to the bite is severe. First step, sez he, is to move the patient from ER to ICU. I’m glad we didn’t go down that path.
Rick, thanks for the SLJ quote! I didn’t see the movie, but I agree wholeheartedly! I assume that was SOAP.
What a coincidence - I caught this little guy yesterday and named him Jeff!
I did think about Steve or Earl of course, but Jeff made less sense, so I went with it.
Kept him around for a while to show some others who had never seen one.
And, in a similar vein… My next-door neighbor was on crutches a while back, but I didn’t speak to him until about 3 weeks after that. Turns out he was putting stuff on his mulch pile - very near our pool - and was bitten by 3 baby copperheads. He didn’t go to the doctor until the leg had swollen so much that it split the skin wide open.
The worst part is that he never even told me what happened until 3 weeks later, or suggested that the kids keep an eye open for venomous snakes
LearJeff, I would suggest being good about the ibuprofen. It’s easier to keep pain down than to let it spike, take meds, and get it back down to a tolerable level again.
Be sure to take with food. If I take NSAIDs for more than a day I throw in something like Zantac to get rid of acidity, which increases with using NSAIDS. YMMV, IANAD, etc.
I just wanted my co-workers from below the Rio Grande to recognize them when they saw them. I never advocate killing snakes unless it’s an obvious him-or-me situation.
I let him go back into the woods as soon as everyone was learned up on copperheads!
Thanks for the tip. I knew aspirin was acidic, but wasn’t aware it was true for NSAIDs in general. I made sure to take my usual Prilosec, and I’ve been fine.
Nope, thank goodness. By Sunday I could get around without crutches and get a loose flipflop on. I still have a grayish bruise over half my foot, but nothing like the nasty black-blue bruises I’ve seen on internet photos. Today I took my dog for a typical “short” walk for the first time. (He gets two a day, usually one short, one medium, and longer ones on the weekends or if it’s nice out.) My foot is still swollen and hurts like hell every time I bang it (which seems to happen a lot, especially when I was fiddling with the crutches). All in all I think I got off pretty easy.
