Daniel Case, 45, was blue-lighted to hospital after being bitten by a two-foot adder while relaxing at his home in rural Cornwall. He was sitting on the sofa at his cottage in Tintagel on June 25 when he felt a “shooting pain” in his right foot.
After jumping up, he saw a “whopping great adder” latched onto the side of his foot. The fully grown venomous snake had “very solid black and green” scales. Case, who owns body boarding and fishing business Salty Fins Kernow, was rushed to hospital where he was given antivenom, which triggered a seizure, requiring an overnight stay.
Remote cottage encounter
Case, whose cottage is “very remote”, built into a valley and surrounded by gorse hedges, said: “It took about three or four seconds to compute what had happened - and I looked down - and there was a whopping great adder. It was probably close to a few feet long, it was a big one. It was hanging off the side of my foot, essentially. And so I sort of flicked my foot, and it went off. It was incredibly painful.”
The reptile slithered under his sofa as he ran to call an ambulance. He wrapped a shirt around his foot and leg to slow the venom. His friend, a lifeguard and paramedic, came immediately, and an off-duty paramedic also drove to his cottage as no ambulances were available.
Blue-lighted to hospital
The paramedic said he needed to be blue-lighted to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske, but on the way they encountered another ambulance heading to Derriford, where he was transferred. His symptoms became “very, very painful”, and he was given Oramorph before arriving at Derriford Hospital.
He waited in A&E as his condition worsened, feeling faint, sick, and with “very high” blood pressure. Six hours after the bite, he was given antivenom through a cannula at 8.30pm, but had a seizure almost “as soon as the cannula came out”.
Hospital stay and aftermath
The night included blood tests, a CT scan at 2am, and an X-ray to check for fangs, which was clean. Case stayed until 1pm the next day, June 26. He said: “It went from a nice day to feeling like I was in hell.”
Upon returning home, he learned seal rescue services had retrieved the snake. He said: “It had gone up onto my sofa and made itself comfy along the back wall between the sofa and the cool walls of the cottage. It makes me wonder, how long had it actually been in here? I could have been sitting on the sofa with it.”
On June 28 he returned to A&E with heart palpitations and chest pain, receiving antibiotics that “didn’t make a difference”. He has since searched for adder eggs but found none. He remains wary of snakes, saying: “I'm scanning around the whole time, like if a leaf breezed past my foot, I'm jumping out of the way.” Despite netting windows and doors, he added: “I’m very conscious of where I put my feet, even in the house at the minute.”
