Snake bite-3/10/96-HEADLINE: Bizarre tales from Colorado ERs
BYLINE: Linda Castrone; Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
Life in real emergency rooms isn't exactly as it's portrayed on TV, but no one can work in them without collecting bizarre stories.
Dr. Paul Snodderley of Fort Collins has been telling his ''snake bite'' story for years, often as an effort to take patients' minds off what he's doing to them. When Malibu doctor Mark Brown polled the nation's emergency doctors for good anecdotes, Snodderley wrote it up. It's one of three Colorado stories included in Brown's new book, Emergency! True Stories from the Nation's ERs Villard, $ 21:
A police car, siren screaming, came full throttle down the street and pulled into the Emergency entrance. The officer grabbed a stainless steel basin containing the head and the first 12 to 15 inches of a large snake, and ran inside. Another followed with the remaining five or six feet of the reptile's body and tail, penetrated by seven bullet holes.
The snake had bitten its owner, who now lay in one of the trauma rooms, pale and frightened but calm, wearing a rubber tourniquet above the bite.
The patient said the snake was a Golden Falls cobra; nobody in this western urban hospital had any idea how to treat a cobra bite victim. Though his arm was becoming purple and congested, no one was ready to remove the tourniquet. At last a snake expert from the local zoo arrived, examined the remains of the snake and announced in a calm voice, ''This is a Golden False cobra.'' Its bite was harmless.
The tourniquet was removed. The patient was discharged. The police issued him a ticket for possessing an exotic pet and left.
Copyright 1996 Denver Publishing Company
Denver Rocky Mountain News
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