Austin McGee, 20, was on his family's heavily wooded farmland in
Tennessee when he heard a soft buzzing nearby. "I heard it a few times,
but it sounded more like a bug, so we ignored it," he recalls. McGee
would regret that decision.
He and a friend had traveled deep into the woods on the family's 500
acres of land to retrieve some scrap metal to repair his father's
tractor. "After I heard the sound, I reached down to pick up the piece
of metal at the top of the pile and felt a bite," he says. "I pulled my
hand back, and there were two small bloody fang marks."
McGee never saw the snake that bit him, but the size of the fang
marks combined with the buzzing sound confirmed that it must have been a
baby rattlesnake. "I instantly told my friend, 'I just got bitten by a
rattlesnake,'" he recounts. Snake bites made the list of the 12 most dangerous bites you can get—here are the rest.
McGee and his friend made it back to his parents' house, where they
told them what happened and headed for the hospital. "The whole way to
the hospital my finger was throbbing with my heartbeat," he says. "It
just felt like I had smashed my finger really hard. At that point, it
wasn't too swollen yet, but I was getting nervous."
Once McGee
arrived at the hospital, it took a few hours for doctors to be certain
how to treat him—giving time for his finger to swell to disturbing
proportions. "They took lots of blood for testing and then gave me a lot
of anti-venom. They gave me over half a million dollars of anti-venom,
at least three days' worth," he says.
He was released from the
hospital after two nights but followed up with doctors to be sure his
finger was healing. "One doctor told me I was going to lose my finger,
and one told me he thought it would make it," he remembers. "I was
pretty sure I was going to lose it, too. I didn't know a finger could do
that." Recovery for McGee has been slow but steady: "The fourth night
after I was bitten was the worst; it felt like I was sticking my finger
into lava. It was crazy how much it hurt." McGee never expected to
encounter a rattlesnake on his family farm—here's why so many snakes are on the loose.
When Reader's Digest spoke
to McGee, it had been about a month since the bite, and he said his
finger wasn't swollen anymore but was still difficult to bend. "I'm back
to work now and life as usual," he says. "It looks like this will be a
slow recovery process, but I'm living my life. My finger still has a
crater in it at the bite site. It's funny, I've lived on this farm my
whole life and I've only seen one rattlesnake."
McGee advises
others who have been bitten by a snake to seek treatment fast. But
you're better off not getting bitten in the first place, he says: "If
you're in a wooded area, stay away from places that snakes might be, and
kick around the area before putting your body there. Listen closely and
pay attention to noises you hear. If I had kicked the metal pile before
reaching into it, maybe I would've scared the snake away. Maybe I
wouldn't have been bitten." Read on to learn how another man survived a rattlesnake bite with no way to call 911 or get to a hospital.
