A teenage girl searching for a cell phone signal near San Diego stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes and was bitten six times, but survived.
Reuters reported that the girl, Vera Oliphant, 16, of El Cajon received 24 vials of antivenom after she was bitten by an adult rattlesnake and five young rattlers Oct. 27 outside her uncle’s home. She was in the intensive care unit for four days, Reuters said.
“I was trying to find a signal to call my mom and text my boyfriend,” Oliphant said last week after being released from the hospital.
“I didn’t see them until I already stepped on their nest and I felt them biting me,” she told Reuters.
“My vision started to go right away. First it looked like the snakes blended into the leaves and then I started seeing black spots around the edges and I started blacking out,” she said.
She returned to her uncle’s home in Jamul, outside San Diego, and he rushed her to the emergency room, she said.
On the way, she talked to her mother and her boyfriend, who told her to stay calm so the venom wouldn’t spread.
“I told my mom and my boyfriend I love them in case I don’t get to see them again,” she said.
Oliphant said the next time she can’t get a signal, she will be more careful.
“Be careful where you step,” she told Reuters. “If you don’t need to, just wait until you are somewhere that you can call people.”
