Real cases and experiences of snake bite

I have read some real cases of people who has bitten by a snake before and their stories of the experience they've got after getting a snake bite. This will help me to get an idea of how I should make and plan my story for my snake bite project and also understand more about what will happen after bitten by a snake (how the venom effected on the body, etc).

1 st case:
The victim lives in Arizona and she visited her friend in Tucson who lived on the edge of the desert. As she wanted to pick some tomatoes, she walked close to the plants. Suddenly, she feels painful on her hand and she saw two small marks on her knuckles. When she was panic, her hand has already swelling and after five minutes she got bitten by the western diamondback rattlesnake, she suffered from intense pain, burning sensation around the wounds and feeling shocked. When she reached the hospital, her hand turned blue as the venom has started to destroy her blood vessels and within an hour after she got bitten, her arm had ballooned to twice of its original size. The rattlesnake venom will attack the tissue and blood and in order to stop that, she needs to inject antivenom. If she had got to the hospital an hour later after she got bitten, her arm would have been amputated. At first, the doctor told her that she was at risk as her skin can't stretch that much for the amount of swelling and the pressure will reduce blood flow which will cause the tissue to die. But after she has taken 22 vials of antivenom, the doctor said she was in good condition and so she stayed in the hospital for three days. Her arm was swollen and ballooned and she had gained 15lb in fluid. It took her a month for her hand to return to normal size and she still in pain and it took her months to recover. After four years later, her joints were still stiff. 

After reading the first case, I can imagined how the victim suffered from the pain which caused by the snake bite and understanding more about the process of how the venom works and react to her body either internal or external. A venomous snake bite takes a very long period of time for recovery and will lead to after effects as well. 

2nd case:
So in the second case, the victim is called Lorraine Jonsson who was 50 years old. He lives in Los Angeles, CA. She got bitten by a snake on her inner ankle and within seconds, she felt panic, has got blurred vision and the wound started to swell. There are twin puncture wounds on her ankle. Bruises and blisters started to form around the bite within one and a half hour and the venom started to melt the tissue near the wound within six hours after bitten. The victim hadn't told anyone where she had been hiking and she hasn't got any signals on her phone. She felt to the ground and tried to yell and find people for help and luckily there is a car appeared within a few minutes. The couple drove her through the park and they found a ranger to call the ambulance. She had stopped breathing as the venom has expanded to the lungs. But luckily within an hour after she got bitten by the snake, the doctor has injected 116 vials of antivenom which has saved her life. 

3rd case:

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S1681-150X2010000400011&script=sci_arttext

The above photo shows a 41 years old male who got bitten by a snake and results several snake bites on his left hand while he was sleeping. He managed to go to the hospital within 15 minutes after he got bitten. During the following two days, his arm was swollen and  'compartment syndrome of the forearm was clinically excluded by showing absence of paraesthesia, pain or passive stretch and disproportionate pain.'. He has got two bites on his arm and one of them is on the dorsum of the hand while the other one is on the dorsum of the ring finger. On below, it shows the process of how the would goes before the patient opted for a ray amputation.
'Surgery was delayed until full demarcation, which occurred 10 days after admission (12 days post injury). The ring finger was still viable but was necrotic and septic over the dorsal aspect, with partial destruction of the extensor tendons. This area showed a 5 by 5 cm undermined wound, with extensor tendon loss to the ring finger, as well as loss of the extensor digiti minimi quinti and partial sloughing of the third finger's extensor tendon (<50%). The wounds were dressed with Intrasite gel and the patient was empirically started on amoxicillin-clavulanate. Tissue samples were submitted for microbiological analysis, showing Morganella morganii and Proteus vulgaris, both sensitive to ciprofloxacin and trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole. Considering the face that the patient was formally debrided and showed improvement prior to receiving the culture results, the initial antibiotic course was completed. The patient opted for a ray amputation. He current;y has good hand function and is participating in a rehabilitation program.'

4th case:

http://cdn.radiolive.co.nz/radiolive/AM/2013/5/2/35065/steven-rankin1.jpg?width=620

The victim is called Steve Rankin who is the producer of  the Discovery show 'Naked and Afraid' and he is 51 years old when the time he got bitten by the fer-de-lance snake at Costa Rica rainforest on the 23rd March, 2013. It took him 2 hours to go to the nearest hospital and luckily he was rescued. On below is an interview of him talking about his experience after bitten by the snake. 

'Within seconds, mu heart started racing, I felt a painful burning sensation in my left foot. I put my weight ton my right foot. I suddenly felt weak. The guys grabbed my shoulders and held me up. My knees immediately went to jelly.'
'My leg continued to swell for the next five or six days. My left foot blistered as the pain from the bite subsided. The trouble was, every time I stood up, the pain from the swelling took hold. I remember it felt like every muscle fiber in my leg was full of pressure and about the explode.... That pressure was more painful than the pain immediately after the bite, I'd never felt anything like it.'
'one week after the initial bite, the blisters popped and the resulting wounds began festering.'
'The flesh in my foot was rotting. Nurses put me on a gurney. As they wheeled me away. I watched my foot drip a trail of pus and blood onto the hospital clean floor.'
'The surgeons opened up my foot and removed the infected, liquefied flesh. They cut away extra bits of tissue that were beginning to go bad and dressed the ankle and foot with a vacuum bag- a bag polythene sack that they wrapped around my lower leg and attached to a pump. I was full of morphine, so I couldn't feel much pain, but my lower leg felt heavy and thick. It felt something like a throbbing concrete block.'
'They couldn't say that the spread of dead tissue had been completely arrested. I wondered if I was going to keep my foot.'
'After one more cleaning operation on my foot, Clinica Biblica released me on April 5th. I left San Jose around midnight on a Lear Jet kitted out like a mobile ICU. In Los Angeles, an ambulance drove me to Cedars Sinai Medical Center, where a team of new doctors took a look at me every few minutes. They performed an eight-hour operation that included taking a chink of flesh from my left thigh and grafting it onto my foot.'

http://cdn4.everyjoe.com/wp-content/gallery/steve-rankin/stephen-rankin-snake-bite-photos-1.jpg

The photo on above shows the flesh has started to necrotised and is recovering after the surgery and the photo is taken after 6 days he got attacked by the snake.

http://wa1.cdn.radiolive.co.nz/radiolive/AM/2013/5/2/35065/steven-rankin2.jpg?width=620

References: 

• http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/23/experience-bitten-by-rattlesnake
• http://www.backpacker.com/survival/out-alive-bitten-by-a-rattlesnake/#bp=0/img2
• http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S1681-150X2010000400011&script=sci_arttext
• http://www.outsideonline.com/1916651/surviving-viper-bite