A San Diego woman’s peaceful morning gardening session ended with a venomous visitor, a trip to the ER and a crash course in why rattlesnake season is no joke.
Diane Distefano was elbow-deep in her University City backyard garden when she felt something bite her.
“And you know, I’m not thinking of anything. I’m just reaching around pulling out the milkweed, and I couldn’t see my hand,” Distefano told CBS 8.
“And within an hour, I was back inside the house, and I noticed these two wounds that had started to get a bluish-red color and were raised. And kind of looked like a snake bite.”
Distefano raced to Kaiser Clairemont Mesa Hospital while piecing together the clues.
“Pit vipers or vipers, like rattlesnakes, of which we have a lot of; they make the puncture wound,” she told outlet. “The puncture wounds were not very far apart. So, it’s kind of like a process of elimination.”
The culprit turned out to be a young rattlesnake.
Doctors called it a “dry bite” — the snake struck, but no venom was delivered.
Dr. William Woo of Kaiser Permanente said that this is the outcome in roughly 25% of bites.
“So, assuming that this is a poisonous snake or a venomous snake, what we’ll do is we will observe the local area of the bite,” he told CBS 8. “We’re looking for tissue damage, bruising, spreading of these signs, and even changes in blood work.”
If antivenom is needed, the medical bills can be even scarier than the snake.
A local toddler who needed 30 vials of antivenom in 2024 left the hospital with a $200,000 bill. The insane prices are due to complicated manufacturing, low demand, and major hospital markups, the outlet noted.
Meanwhile, Distefano is still dealing with the aftermath.
“The doctor told me ‘it suffered a trauma,’ my hand. And it’s going to be a while before some of this stuff goes away,” she said.
With San Diego’s warm winter fueling a spike in rattlesnake encounters, health officials urged those bitten to stay calm and call 911 immediately.
