Snakes at a baby shower

Good news, had an awesome baby shower, bad news my dad was bitten by a copperhead. There are three poisonous snakes in North Carolina (copperhead, water moccasin, and rattle snake) and my dad stepped on one (it was dark, he's not a snake praiser) in his backyard. I grew up in this house, my parents have lived here for 18+ years, we've had small green garden snakes, a range in sizes of black snakes, but we've never seen a copperhead anywhere NEAR here(or anywhere in general, except for like NatGeo or animal planet or what not) .Until recently, snakes didn't bother me, I used to chase garden snakes with a stick (classy right?), but uh now a little creeped out. We have a rubber snake that we used to hide around the house to scare each other, not so funny anymore.

So let's recap, this week we've had: earthquakes, hurricanes, rebel forces (okay so that was in Libya, but still a pretty big deal), poisonous snake bites, and a baby shower (I'm not a horrible person, at least not in this case, my dad was really upset we were going to cancel it). 

I've always considered North Carolina a realtively safe state. We don't have a whole lot of terrorist priority targets, we don't normally have earthquakes (we have several fault lines, but they're mostly dorment (I took geography in college (rocks for jocks!)), the outer banks get hurricanes but usually they're just wind and rain by the time they get this far inland, we get tornadoes sometimes but they rarely cause deaths. It's just a calm, relaxed, happy little state.

 I swear I'm not giving birth to Damien. I've been to church a couple of times during my pregnancy and neither me nor my son have burst into flames or caused crosses to turn up side down. We're good.

So for future reference here's a quick fact list about copperhead bites and treatments:

Snake bites happen at odd times, like while my mom and I were making food for the shower and my dad was putting stuff up outside and getting pumped with venom. Not while he's hiking, dirt bike riding, clearing brush, excetra excetra.

Sometimes the first responder will look like your boyfriend and confuse you for a second.

Before the ambulance leaves 10 firefighters will go snake hunting, on purpose, by choice, in the dark with axes and flashlights (not only will they rush into burning buildings, they will kill poisneous sankes, can firefighters get any more hardcore?)

The EMS workers and firefighters will stop by  the ER room when they can to see how the victim is doing. (I need to make them some cookies)

Don't keep the snake in the room with you (it was dead and in a bag), the nurses will all come in and out and squeal at it while the victim is writhering in pain (but the nurses will also be SUPER nice, compassionate, and efficent).

Anti-venom for copperheads is a myth. Unless you're very old or a young child, they will wait at least 24 hours to give it to you, if at all. The medical community is losing faith in it as a healer, it won't help pain, it is just supposed to stop the spread of venom.

The anti-venom cost $5000 a dose, and a full series is at least 4 doses (total cost $20,000).

All other visitors/patients/staff/whatnot will have snake stories and tell us what we did wrong/right and give us LOTS of advice that would have been helpful 48 hours ago not so much now.  

The strongest pain medication available will not stop the pain, but it may make it harder for you to breath.

It's a minimum three day stay in the hospital.

Suggesting we a have a Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity copperhead bite Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run For The Cure, will only be funny on day 5.