Ian: (Question) Judy can you tell me what the date was of this event?
Judy: It happened in the early hours of eighteenth of January 2013.
Ian: OK, now just from the beginning what exactly happened, what were you were doing?
Judy: I went to bed on the seventeenth of January and woke up about two o'clock in the morning on the eighteenth of January to see my husband and our friend looking at me and saying ”are you alright”?
Um…and I’m like yeah I’m alright, but I really didn’t know where I was or what was happening, and I’d had a massive seizure which had woken the people in the next tent up and my husband and so that’s what they were asking me whether I was alright.
Um, I felt very ill, so I asked them to….I told them I needed to be sick and they went and got a bucket, but in fact I wasn't sick but I had diarrhoea…um and I’d also wet myself having a seizure. So they then took me into the shack, so we were camped at the back of our friends’ shack in a tent…um and they rang and ambulance because they were not sure what was wrong with me.
Ian: So there was no indication of a snake being involved at that point?
Judy: No not at all…um so the ambulance because we were at Nelsons Bay which is about twelve kilometres past the Arthur River…um the ambulance came from Smithton and was there in about and hour, which is a normal time that…what how long it would take…..
Um, they diagnosed that I had gastro, um..despite the fact that I had about a fifty cent piece very black mark on my elbow which I drew their attention too…..um, the first time I said I had a bruise and the second time
I said no it’s not a bruise it’s like a blood blister, and it feels like it’s covered in velvet that’s how it felt very smooth and soft but, um like a blood blister. So after thirty five minutes the ambulance left and left me there….and um all I wanted to do was sleep so my husband…they put me in a bed in the shack and I did sleep…um…I don’t know what time but at sometime later in the morning I was in incredibly large amount of pain in my shoulders, my hips
Ian: Was there any local pain on..around the bite area?
Judy: No!
Ian: OK.
Judy: Not that I recall put it that way, it felt like my body was cramping all over…um, so my husband said he wanted me to get up and try to have a drink and I got up but I couldn’t swallow properly and it tasted off. Whatever the toast… I couldn’t…so I went back tho bed and got progressively worse and so in the end my husband said then my husband said I think we should drive you so he drove me to the Smithton Hospital
But before he took me like I couldn’t dress myself so he had to…he and our friend helped put some pan…like jeans on…and he drove me and by then he had to hold me up in the car cause the muscles in my back were no longer able to hold me up and we got to the Smithton Hospital and by then… this is like 10 hours probably after I was bitten. because the hospital estimated that I was probably bitten about an hour before my seizure. It’s all a bit estimative..but so the Smithton hospital…um…they…my heart wasn’t working properly it was missing every 13th beat…um..my blood pressure was high. I was having trouble breathing. Most of this I was unaware of.
So then they brought a doctor in and I don’t remember that at all, I just know what I was told and she gave me a very large needle into my neck and another needle, we now think that this one was adrenaline and one was antibiotics and screamed for an ambulance to get me to Burnie as quickly as possible. Um…she thought perhaps I had Meninga coccal so um by then they didn’t really look at my arm.They were more worried about my heart.
Ian: Your vital organs?
Judy: Yes, so um..they took me to the Burnie Hospital about 10 minutes from the Burnie Hospital um, when my blood pressure…no I only remember 3 things about being in the ambulance, 1 the ambulance driver telling me off because I didn't ring him to come back and get me…2 that um, my blood pressure went to 250/140 and I have seen my hospital records so I know that in fact is what it did go to, and I remember stopping at the hospital and asking if Peter was there.
They’re my 3 only memories of being in the ambulance. About 10 minutes from Burnie, perhaps about Winyardish um, our friends found the snake in a tent…so um, they phoned the Burnie Hospital, and said, you got a patient coming, we just found a ten…you know a snake in the tent and then the ambulance…they called the ambulance and at that point the ambulance like basically took off flashing its lights..um so when I got to the Burnie hospital, I don’t remember really anything.
I remember…um, only one thing and that is discussing how they were going to get my clothes off and me thinking I said, but I don’t know if I really did say, just cut them off. Um and then I don’t remember anything else for the next 3 days. So I was…um, ventilated intubated ventilated…um, had a central line into my heart..um…My husband was told I would not live the weekend.
Ian: Would or wouldn’t?
Judy: Wouldn’t. Um…so I woke up in ICU. I only remember a couple of things in ICU those first 4 days… um, I remember so I couldn’t open my eyes, my eyes were paralysed, so I had to lift them with my finger. I remember seeing a couple of people, um….but I don’t really remember.
So I was in ICU for 7 days, 4 of those on um..ventilators… um, by then obviously by then they thought that I would live and um… after a week I then was transferred to the medical ward. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t see, um… I had no saliva, I couldn’t spit so if I started to choke, which I did often because I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t spit it out. It was fairly scary actually I’ve never been sick in my life. I’ve never been in hospital, I’ve never (really) had a needle and I know that I had 67 blood tests while I was in there because
I’ve seen the…the um print out of how many so um I suppose once I was on the medical ward then they brought in a team of people physio’s…um dieticians because they estimated that I lost about between 10 and 12 kilos of muscle.
I actually was much thinner and much fitter prior to this happening. Um…I then got pneumonia oh, while I was in hospital in ICU I had kidney failure, something went wrong with my liver as well. Um gradually they told me 10 days maybe, this little doctor looked into my eyes and said um I think this will all be ok in 10 days.
What he meant was the paralysis would be gone, but I felt I would be better. Um…I’m a teacher so I wasn’t able to go back to work until the May and I went back to work one day a week only…um, I was having rehab. I had physio and I had speech therapy. I was under a psychologist. I was seeing a wound specialist, an OT, Um my speech isn’t still right. It is ok now but when I get tired I lisp, can’t get words out can’t…so when I first was in I, no, when I was first in a ward at the hospital I kind of talked like…(gives demo of how she spoke with a degree of spasticity)
That is how I talked. Um I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t shower myself. Peter used to come in every day to help me shower myself. Um partly because when he knew this had to happen when I came home, so after 3 weeks I was made an outpatient and for 2 more weeks I was an outpatient and then I went home to Victoria. Um my wound was…had to be dressed every 2nd day.
They said that I would need um…a skin graft but I haven't needed that. I have healed it myself so that is good. So currently I still am seeking a psychologist as I am diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and um…and I have acquired brain injury. So that obviously is improving because um when I first came out of hospital I remember things that really upset me are not so much the snake, cause I never saw the snake, I don’t remember getting bitten by the snake. Things that really traumatise me are my inability to function as the same person that I was prior to the snake bite.
They’re the things that really…..So I remember when I as before we came back to Victoria I um I wanted to put on a little BBQ for the people who had supported us. We were very fortunate, Peter is a Tasmanian, so all his friends live around Burnie, Penguin, so we were very well supported by a whole lot of people especially Peter, it as pretty awful for him so I wanted to put on this little BBQ
So I left hospital in a wheelchair so um I still had a wheelchair but I thought if I could go to the supermarket I’d be able to hold on to the trolly and get around the supermarket. and we got into the supermarket and I started to cry and said to Peter I can’t do this I am going to cry now (she became tearful)…Um because I couldn’t, my brain couldn’t walk and think about shopping. I couldn’t……………….
Ian: So multitasking wasn’t happening for you?
Judy: No I could not, could not, where as I was you know, I could have done that as well as talk to someone and read a book before. So they’re the things that still upset me and some days I still can’t so the part of my brain is um that the processing of information so if I’m tired or if its noisy, or
if there is more than one thing going on, or it’s very new information then I have trouble… processing it. But as they have told me that, hopefully maybe another year, so if I’ve gone from not being able to walk and shop, I’m back at work now at 3 days a week instead of 5 but still, 3 is
better than one.
Um so my brain will continue, so that is what they told me um. My speech you know that muscle may be damaged forever, I don't know. I didn't know snakes could do all this stuff to you. I used to walk about between 8 and 12 kilometres a day, I’m now may be able to walk in
pain for some of it for one. Um so um……yeah!
Ian: So were you ever on dialysis?
Judy: I don’t know. I know that I had kidney failure. I know that I had plasma transfusion. I don’t
know if I was on dialysis.
Ian: So the symptoms that are plaguing you at the moment are memory, and I mean um….
Judy: Some of the processing
Ian: Some of your processing..um, your eyesight is that…?
Judy: My eyesight is not what it was. I couldn't drive so I lost um….for about 7 months it would have been I had the most incredible…the first probably 6 weeks I had the most amazing hallucinations. Saw, my eyes saw things that weren't there.
Peter, Judy’s husband: It could have been the drugs,
Judy: It could have been, but once I got out of hospital, we’d be driving somewhere and I’d say to Pete: “Peter there’s a camel over there” and he’d be saying it’s not a camel. So I’d see these things. Well instead of seeing that speaker as a speaker, I would see it as a chair. My eyes weren’t… it was really weird.
A friend reminded us the other day they day that they visited me in hospital, I’m looking at and I’m going my eyes, saying your head is on her shoulders. So I’d see stuff like optical illusions. So they…. I had my eyes tested despite my doctor saying just let it go, it’s a time thing. I’ve lost 80% of my peripheral vision.
Ian: Has that returned or not?
Judy: Yes um,It is back to only 20% lost, so I notice it for example um…I’m not confident crossing a road, um I’m not confident in a lot of things. It has taken some of my confidence away.
Ian: What year was it that you were bitten
Judy: It is 2 years this coming Saturday. They told me in hospital um they were beautiful in the Burnie hospital I don’t have a bad thing to say about them except one nurse she was not nice but a.. you know. In the whole scheme of things they were beautiful to me and um they saved my life. Ihave no doubt they saved my life.
Um….but they come..the doctors they’d come to visit me because no one at the hospital had treated someone with a snakebite. Or not someone who was sick from a snake bite people who had had a warning bite but not who were sick. But anyway this day they had this beautiful Asian doctor who came to put a cannula in because the nurse couldn’t get my cannula I think they used every vein in my body and um he hurt me and he was saying, Oh I am so sorry you have been through so much and I don’t want to hurt you.
So he said I’m going to get my boss and he brought his boss who was a female anaesthetist and she said hello how are you, and I have no recollection or memory of her at all. And then she said hello to Peter like she knew him and I said do I know you? and she said oh I’m the doctor that got you breathing again and I said oh thanks for that. Then she said we can find no records of someone who was a sick as you from a snakebite who lived.
It is very rare to get all 3 symptoms so I had the paralysis, I had the work that starts with R (Ian’s suggests Rhabtomyolisis)
Yes that and coagulation. So I had them all and all quite badly so that is what she said to me. She said we can’t find no other evidence of someone who’s had all what..3 symptoms and lived. so when you hear stuff like that it kind of freaks you out a bit. You know what I mean, It’s like Oh my goodness…. So yeah. I’m very grateful for the Burnie Hospital.
Ian: So what treatments do you have ongoing now?
Judy: Psychologist and um
Ian: Is anyone monitoring you physical improvements?
Judy: Oh my doctor I suppose. I’m on blood pressure tablets too, I was not on the before. In the hospital they could not get my blood pressure to be….like they’d take it and it would be hight and they they would take it and it would be low, so I am on a low dose of blood pressure medication, which I wasn’t on…I wasn't on any medication before. I have also given up smoking. I haven’t had a smoke since the day I was bitten.
Ian: That’s probably a good thing.
Judy: Yeah! They said it was probably good for the healing of my arm. So you you know you can’t smoke on a life support machine. They don’t encourage that (she laughs) and um..I was so sick like I was so sick that I couldn't have even gone outside for a cigarette for the first 3 weeks anyway could I?
Probably first month; and fatigue is my other thing, so there will be some days, so I work high pressure teaching job with kids that are disconnected from education, so challenging kids but I love my job but um I’ll come home some days and I’ll say ”Peter I just have to sit I can’t, I don’t want to talk, I do… I’ve never had fatigue like that before in my life. Not like it was a year and a half ago when I would have a shower and I would have to have a sleep to recover like really bad. So and um…no the physiotherapist that I was seeing I saw at the end of last year and I’m going to start going back to build these muscles up in my legs.
Ian: So how long was it from the time of your necrotic lesion to where it closed over? Are we talking months?
Judy: Yes, months, oh big months, nearly six.
Ian: And you were having it dressed every second day, were they doing a packed dressing were they?
Judy: It was five months wasn’t it? At Burnie hospital nobody wanted to touch it. They didn’t like it. Um then when I got out of Burnie hospital yeah they were just putting these dressings and then when I went home my sister is a nurse so she would come around but she got me into a wound specialist and then the wound specialist she was controlling what was happening.
So not packed so much, but um $10 a time bandages I was buying with um seaweed and silicon and um then different creams and she would say it’s healing too quickly, we’ve got to slow it down, then it is healing too slowly and we’ve got to……so she was always using her expertise.
Ian: They have to allow it to granulate for the tissue to be viable so that it doesn’t scab.
Judy: It’s still sore. It is very sore here (Judy points to her elbow).
Ian: So where, point with your hand exactly where the bite was….where do you think it was. somewhere above the bite (meant to say wound) wasn’t it?
Judy: (she points to the upper part of the wound) Discussion of approximation of bite to wound
Ian: What um size snake was it? Did anyone get a measurement of it?
Judy: Yes it was 16 inches.
Ian: Oh it was only a 16 inch snake, tiger snake….pretty small when you think about what it did.
Judy: But they reckon there could have been more bites under there as well (referring to the wound)
Ian: yeah so they do have a tendency to chew, so they’ll bite and then they’ll just chew.
Judy: Yeah..so we don’t really know why it happened but we suspect that probably Iv’e gone like that, I put my arm off the lilo to the floor of the tent and the snake has probably been asleep and didn’t really like that. Probably was encouraging me to move my arm and um, I didn’t move it, well I probably did in the end I suppose, but you know it stayed in that tent all that time so like say I think the ambulance was called at 3 in the morning, so maybe I was bitten at 2 or 1.30-2 and um I wasn't admitted to the Burnie hospital until 4 o'clock in the afternoon. So that’s a long time.
Ian: So there was a fair lag time between the time of the bite, the estimated time of the bite, to when you actually….they gave you anti-venom?
Judy: 4 ampules.
Ian: Cool..12,000 units…so you had…ah..there’s a reasonable time frame, it all makes quite a lot
of sense.
RECORDING ENDS, 23:44 minutes in duration.
Summary:
Judy Kidd’s case history is by far the most harrowing account I have received to date. The fact that Judy survived is a mark of human resilience when recounting the odds of her being here today to tell her story.
Judy’s courage and tenacity to overcome her disability demonstrated human endurance in spite of her near death experience. Judy’s story needs to be heard by the countless people who ignore the advice given to be prepared when entering the great outdoors.
We can all be found wanting in the complacency stakes from time to time; however Judy’s account brings us back to the reality that ignoring the risks when having a wilderness experience, leaves no room for, if only’s or what if’s!
Preparedness and risk assessment will ensure that surviving will ensure a leading edge, value adding to excitement, adventure and safe outdoor activities.
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