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Oct 05, 2015 News
While some snake bite encounters on the local shores have ended fatally, luck is on the side of Kevin Gomes, thanks to prayers, the Georgetown Hospital Corporation’s medical staff, and his will to live.
After almost a month in hospital and fears that his leg might have been amputated, Gomes recently left the GPHC for home, a smiling youth with both his legs intact.
Almost a month ago, the North West District resident was seeking a living as a gold miner, when a snake which he identified as a labaria sunk its venomous fangs into his right leg.
To save his life, his friend Alex became a doctor on the trail. Alex tied his leg and cut out the bitten area, a decision which caused him to lose a lot of blood.
He was medically evacuated from the interior location to Georgetown.
But with the reality of there being no anti-venom in stock for several years, there was fear of amputation or even death.
For days his relatives, friends and hospital medical staffers exercised patience and faith as did others who visited his bedside after reading his story, while he was treated with saline and symptomatic medication.
He lost some weight eventually and the area on his leg became infected but symptomatic treatment continued even for his 18th birth anniversary which was spent in hospital. He even got occasional motivational checkups from this publication but yesterday when this publication visited the bed in which we had become accustomed to seeing him, we were told that Gomes had been discharged.
“Mr. Snake bite gone home. He actually walked out smiling on both legs,” a patient from a nearby bed reported. “He is a lucky youngster,” one nurse said as she recalled witnessing many other snakebite victims in prior cases being rolled out to the mortuary.
That nurse also detailed her experience of being bitten by a labaria many years ago at Tapatinga.
“That thing hurt like hell,” she said. But lucky for her she had a brother brave enough to run to her rescue. “My brother drink some alcohol and then sucked out the poison and spit… then it started to bleed a lot after he cut it and I eventually woke up in hospital two days later.
She dubbed Gomes a special case, whose time had not come and who got the best medical care, given the limitations at the institution.
Without timely medical treatment chances of survival are slim in cases of snake bite.
In 2009, Maxey Edmund, 27, of Philippi Village, Region Seven lost his life after being bitten on his left calf by a poisonous snake.
The stricken man had walked some 40 miles for treatment, from his village all the way to the Annai Health Centre. By the time he reached, his condition had deteriorated, forcing the Health Centre to transport him for additional treatment in Georgetown, where he succumbed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
In 2012, Nelson Daniels, a 45-year-old labourer, of Warapana, Upper Pomeroon River, succumbed to the poison of a venomous serpent four days after he was bitten.
The father of four was reportedly unable to access medical attention in time due to financial constraints, coupled with the remote area in which he lived.
He was transported to the Oscar Joseph Hospital at Charity and then to the GPHC after his condition worsened.
(Mondale Smith)
Mineral and oil rich country borrowing to feed, clothe and house its citizens.
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