Please send good wishes and prayers

Ouch! Back when I lived in Maryland an acquaintance of mine got bitten by a baby copperhead. Or was it a baby pygmy rattlesnake? He said it was like getting stung by 1,000 yellow jackets. Painful as all get out. Might not kill you but he said he entertained the idea of cutting off his hand to stop the pain.

Sounds like your son is on the mend, though, so that is good news. Perhaps your doc was reluctant to go the antivenin route because of possible allergic reactions?

There are just too many bad things lurking that can be where putting your hands without looking might not be a good idea. Black widow spiders come to mind, and they aren't any joke, neither. I imagine rattlesnakes aren't rare in your area, and they would me much more potent than a copperhead. At the very least, wear thick GLOVES. Yeah, hindsight, I know...

We have too many scorpions around here, so both Connie and myself tend to put on thick gloves whenever we are messing around with chores that require moving things that haven't been moved in a while. Heck, Connie found a scorpion in a plastic Walmart bag in the old reptile building just yesterday, in with some odds and ends in that bag. That was certainly unexpected, but like I said, they seem to be pretty common around here. She never thought about putting on gloves then, so lucky she didn't get stung.

Anyway, hope your son doesn't experience lingering pain from the bite.

How is he feeling now? Can he flex or extend the bitten finger even a little? How about any sensation aside from the discomfort in response to stimulating the fingertip? Conservative measures generally work well for these bites, so I am expecting positive news over time.

He can flex a little but cannot pick anything up.

A little is enough. As long as the neural drive and muscular response are there, everything will work out in time as the swelling subsides and tissues heal.

How are things now?

Much better, thank you for asking. Of course, there is still one negative side effect: At the time he was bitten, he was not insured. Still, what is important is that he is alive, everything else we can get through.

I am glad he has improved. That is rough about the insurance, unfortunately.

Glad to hear he is doing OK. And yeah, that lack of insurance could hurt as much as the bite. Connie's stay in the hospital for a couple of days came to over $200,000. I don't know what exactly that includes, though. Maybe that includes her surgery, but I just don't know. And we don't have nearly all the bills in yet. And this is all ongoing.

None for my heart attack have shown up neither, matter of fact. Well, except for the ambulance ride, which was over $1,000. Insurance made a HUGE difference in what our out of pocket costs were in both instances. I am sure that after the dust settles, had we not been on Medicare w/supplementals, it would have destroyed us financially.

Things are such that you just cannot afford to NOT have health insurance these days. Everyone is just a morning's wake up with chest pains or a really awful diagnosis at the doctor's office from bankruptcy.

I told the kid he needs to have insurance. Didn't listen. I told you that you needed to see your doc for that chest pain. Didn't listen.
Like Rodney Dangerfield would say, "Can't get no respect."

It took 24 days for that "I told you so" to finally surface. And here I was thinking I was going to get away with it.