After a harrowing encounter with a 2.2m black mamba, which bit her on April 1, a grateful Mitzi Hazell is counting her blessings as she talks about the incident.
|||Durban - April 1 will be for ever etched in the memory of 55-year-old Mitzi Hazell of Inchanga, about halfway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, as the day her neighbours and a team of doctors rallied around her to help her cheat death.
After a harrowing encounter with a 2.2m black mamba, which bit her last Friday, a grateful Hazell is counting her blessings as she talks about the incident from her hospital bed in the intensive care unit at Durban’s Netcare St Augustine’s Hospital, where she is receiving treatment.
She is clear about one thing: Had it not been for the support of her neighbours and the expertise of seasoned trauma expert Dr Kevin McEwen, she would not have been around to tell her story.
“Dr McEwen’s expertise and knowledge in snakebites saved my life, as did my wonderful neighbours, who made sure I got to the hospital in a remarkable nine minutes.
“Our home in the Inchanga Conservancy, close to Hammarsdale, is about 40km away from the hospital, and ordinarily the journey would have taken around 40 minutes - time I did not have.”
It was the second time in less than a week that her neighbour, Elthea Coffee, had stepped in to help get Hazell to hospital.
The Saturday before, Mitzi came face to face with a spitting cobra.
On that occasion, Coffee took her to the local hospital to have her eyes flushed and treated to prevent blindness after the snake spat venom at her.
This time around, Hazell was checking on her prized show rabbits when she came across the highly aggressive black mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, which bit her on the leg.
It had seemingly slid into the rabbit enclosure for a little shade on a hot 35°C day.
Coffee once again loaded Hazell into her car, this time taking her to St Augustine’s Hospital, the closest medical facility equipped to treat a life-threating snakebite.
En route to the hospital, Andre Grové, a neighbour Hazell did not even know, caught up with Coffee‘s vehicle and helped drag the by-now paralysed Mitzi into his faster vehicle to get her to Durban quicker.
In the interim, another neighbour, Michelle Schrauwen, wisely contacted St Augustine’s, where a team was ready and waiting to treat Mitzi when she got there.
According to McEwen, Hazell arrived with paralysis already having set in.
“Her eyes were drooping and she was having difficulty talking. She also could not walk. When the black mamba bites, it injects a neurotoxic poison into the body which attacks the central nervous system. One of the first signs of paralysis is drooping eyes and double vision. This is followed by difficulty in speaking. Difficulty in breathing follows.”
When Hazell arrived at the hospital, she was given five ampoules of anti-venom serum, while her vital signs, including blood pressure and heart rate, were constantly monitored.
“She recalls nothing of what transpired during the first few hours of the treatment.”
“We were not out of the woods yet. One of the greatest risks associated with the administering of high dosages of anti-venom is the ensuing anaphylactic reaction.”
“It was a long Friday night for the whole medical team involved in her treatment,” says McEwan.
“Everyone pulled together.”
“When I checked on Mitzi on Saturday morning, her leg was very swollen and red... but her condition was stable and her vitals were normal. It was clear we had turned the corner.”
By Monday Mitzi was left feeling stiff and sore, while her joints were quite inflamed.
McEwan has treated five black mamba bites during his 23 years as a trauma doctor at St Augustine’s. All the patients survived.
Before anti-venom, a bite from a black mamba would probably have been fatal, killing a person in 20 minutes.
In terms of advice for victims of a black mamba bite, McEwan suggests they be taken to the nearest hospital which has anti-venom and can treat the victim for anaphylactic shock.
Independent on Saturday