JANE Gatt falls asleep at night and dreams of snakes.
The Hillside mother of three thought she was going to die after she was bitten twice on the arm by a venomous brown snake this month, and now she can’t get them out of her head.
Ms Gatt, 37, made national headlines almost two weeks ago when she was rushed to Sunshine Hospital in a nauseous state on Friday 9 February, the latest victim in a spate of suburban snake attacks.
Ms Gatt was landscaping part of her half-acre property on the edge of Hillside when she went to pick up a skirting board near a pile of debris workmen had left on the property when the snake bit her twice on the upper wrist.
“The snake just came out of nowhere,” she recalled at her home last Wednesday, four days after she was released from hospital. “After it bit me I saw part of the snake. I fell back and I came inside … I didn’t even look back, I came inside.”
“I actually thought that I’d be able to go to the clinic because I wasn’t feeling any side effects at this point, other than the shock, and I’ve never had a shock like I did when I was bitten.”
Even so, after calling her husband Emmanuel at work, she phoned the ambulance because she knew she’d taken in a lot of poison.
The operator told her to keep still to prevent the poison from moving any further through her bloodstream – a tough ask under such trying conditions for anyone, but ever tougher considering Ms Gatt suffers from anxiety and is prone to panic attacks.
She believes that if the operator had not calmed her down she might have panicked and not made it to the hospital in time.
By the time the ambulance arrived the effects of the poison were starting to kick in.
“I was nauseated, hot, I was starting to see everything was spinning, I knew something wasn’t right,” Ms Gatt said.
“When I was in the ambulance I felt like I was going to die,” she said. “My hand had swollen, I was throwing up, I couldn’t breathe.”
The hospital tested Ms Gatt and concluded the venom was from a brown snake, an extremely dangerous but common species in eastern Australia whose poison can cause death if not treated quickly.
Fortunately she was treated quickly and kept in hospital overnight for observation until blood tests confirmed the venom was out of her system.
Today, Ms Gatt knows she’s lucky to be alive.
“They (medical staff) said I was blessed,” she said – for having been bittenm twice and survived.
She said that she owed her life to the emergency operator who kept her calm while she waited for the ambulance.
But Ms Gatt warned parents about the dangers posed by in suburban backyards during the summer months.
She said that parents needed to make sure they and their children were educated on how to deal with a snake bite.
A snake bite victim had to stay as still as possible, she said, call 000, and apply a bandage to stem the blood flow.
“If it had to happen to anyone I’d prefer it happen to me,” Ms Gatt said. “I’m just glad it didn’t happen to the kids, and parents really need to be aware (of the dangers).”
And although thoughts of snakes may trouble her night and day – she still finds it nerve-wracking to go into her backyard – she’s determined to beat her new-found phobia.
“I’m not going to let this bite destroy what I love, which is the outdoors,” she said.
