A 16-year-old California girl stepped into a rattlesnakes' nest and was bitten six times on Oct. 27 while in a rural area outside San Diego, Reuters reported.
Vera Oliphant is alive after being given 24 vials of antivenom and spending four days in the intensive care unit of Sharp Grossmont Hospital, a hospital official said said. She was bitten by six rattlesnakes: an adult rattlesnake and five young ones, Yahoo! News reported.
Oliphant was trying to find a signal for her cell phone at her uncle's home in Jamul, so she could make a call. "I was trying to find a signal to call my mom and text my boyfriend," Oliphant said on Friday, a day after she was released from the hospital, Yahoo! News reported.
"I didn't see them until I already stepped on their nest and I felt them biting me," she said. "My vision started to go right away. First it looked like the snakes blended into the leaves and then I started seeing black spots around the edges and I started blacking out." After Oliphant made her way back to her uncle's home, he immediately rushed her to the emergency room, she said, Yahoo! News reported.
Although snakebites generally aren't considered to be fatal, each year in the United States there are quite a few people who do die from snake bites. There are even people who have died from rattlesnake bites. Oliphant has recovered and will be returning to classes at Chaparral High School in El Cajon on Monday, Reuters reported.
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