A 28-year-old mother nearly died after getting bitten by a venomous snake in her sleep. She ignored the pain because she thought it was her dog that scratched her.
Nikita Aldridge from Brisbane woke up at 4 am last Monday after experiencing sharp pain in her arm and the sound of her five-year-old MalShih, Freckle, barking.
She went back to sleep after assuming that the small red puncture marks on her right arm were due to Freckle’s scratch. However, after a few hours of excruciating pain, she was rushed to a hospital where she had a seizure attack and fell unconscious.
After examination, doctors discovered that she had a snake bite and told her if she had failed to come to the hospital, she could have died.
Experts have identified a venomous yellow-faced whip snake, whose bite can cause extremely painful swelling.
She said, “I was asleep in bed and I woke up to a sharp pain in my arm and I was bleeding. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
She said, “I just couldn’t believe it when they told me what it was. The fact that it had been in bed with me. I was freaking out. The doctors said I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t have gone to the hospital when I did. When I came around, I was just in shock.”
“Luckily my bite was from a more mildly venomous snake, but I have lupus so that made it even worse and my body was struggling to fight off the venom,” she added.
Nikita said she finds it difficult to sleep after the terrifying incident. “Now I have anxiety, nightmares, and I can’t sleep. I jump at everything. If someone touches me I jump out of my skin,” she said.
The mother to two-year-old Liliana continued, “There’s not much that can be done about snakes coming into your home but if anyone finds anything they think could be something more severe, they should get it checked. I wasn’t worried because I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
At the hospital, Nikita was put on a drip for several hours to eliminate the venom out of her body. She was discharged later on the same day.
She said, “My arm had got worse throughout the day, it got bigger and I was in excruciating pain. I became very unwell.”
“When I put the pictures on Facebook, someone said it looked like a snake bite. I still said there was absolutely no way that was the case because I would have felt a snake bite, but at the same time I was really tired and in so much pain.”
Nikita believes that the snake might still be lurking in her house. She now lives in constant fear that the reptile would bite her again.
“I’m constantly looking around the house, every time I hear a noise I panic because I’ve got a two-year-old,” she said, “I’m extremely tired because I’m too scared to sleep.” “But there’s literally nothing we can do about snakes coming into our home and that just terrifies me when I have a two-year-old wandering around.”
