Amy Morrow was dodging boulders as she hiked through her yard on Lookout Mountain when she felt what she thought was a stick jabbing between her toes. She had just finished watching a storm roll in as the sun set from the bluff behind her home.
Her dogs have encountered venomous snakes – a copperhead and two rattlesnakes – in the rocky terrain before, so she knows the risk well. That’s why she tells visitors to always wear closed-toe shoes when walking along the bluff. But this July, she broke her own rule and wore flip-flops. By the time she made it inside to wipe off the blood, her foot was swelling, fingers tingling and lips going numb.
Her partner called 911 and they hurried down the mountain. An ambulance greeted them at the base and rushed Morrow to an emergency department. She struggled to breathe and thought about her dog Stranger.
“Luckily, I wasn’t thinking of the severity or the possibilities at the time. I was just worried about trying to breathe and thinking about my dog,” Morrow said. “Poor little Stranger – his leg is so tiny – I’m a normal-sized human, and it’s this yucky his poor little leg has gone through this twice.”
Morrow’s memory of the emergency department is fuzzy, but doctors determined she was bitten by a rattlesnake. She spent four days in Erlanger’s medical intensive care unit, where she was given four bags of anti-venom and left with a “very discolored, swollen and painful foot and leg.”