Paramedic's race against time after being bitten by deadly snake

A Queensland paramedic has told of a race against time after she was bitten by a large brown snake outside her home.

Emma Hegarty, from Dalby in the Darling Downs region, told Yahoo7 she heard her cat, Moxie, “arking up to something” under one of the chairs on her back patio on the afternoon of November 27.

“I thought, ‘Maybe she’s hunting something’,” Ms Hegarty, 27, said.

“She was looking at something under one of our recliners, which wasn’t reclined.

“So, I looked to the left and flicked the lever. A brown snake shot out and tagged me on the leg.

“It was more than a metre long.”

Ms Hegarty was home alone at the time and her neighbours were not around.

She also did not have a first-aid kit because a housemate had taken it after recently moving out.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been bitten by a snake’,” she said.

“I was very anxious and usually I’m a pretty chilled-out person.

“I knew the venom would only move into my bloodstream if I moved around a lot or my heartrate went up.

“My phone was inside the house so I had to hop.”

The 27-year-old fashioned a tourniquet for her leg with a belt. She had to recall her training but said she was “struggling to execute”.

“I remembered two past snake bites I’d been two – one was a woman on the Gold Coast when I was a paramedic student and another was a guy in Warwick,” she said.

“The Gold Coast woman died minutes after being bitten while the man in Warwick went into cardiac arrest. I was very much like, ‘Holy s*** – this is what can go wrong’.”

Ms Hegarty rang triple-0 and “within four minutes” paramedics arrived to transport her to hospital.

She would have to wait hours of venom testing.

Luckily, the tests came up negative – the bite was only a warning one.

“It really is a waiting game,” Ms Hegarty said.

“And the worrying thing is it’s always a case of the unknown. If the snake had bitten me again – did it have venom it was holding back?”

The paramedic remained a patient overnight before going back to work two days later.

“I had to take two days off work sick,” she said.

“I probably should have taken more off but I’m not good at being a patient. I’m back helping the good people of Dalby.”

In three years living at her Dalby home it was the first time she had encountered a snake.

But Ms Hegarty said the bite came as a wake-up call and there were a “number of contributing factors” to the snake’s appearance.

The grass in her backyard had grown past knee height and she was also walking around in bare feet.

The area also recently had rain, which she believes may have attracted rodents.

“I’m bloody lucky and there’s nothing like a near-death experience as a wake-up call,” Ms Hegarty said.

“Always have your phone with you and if you get bitten by a snake call triple-0 and tell them. They’ll talk you through what you should and shouldn’t be doing.”

She added snakes do not tend to be aggressive but can be if they are guarding a nest.

A snake catcher was also called to Ms Hegarty’s residence but the snake is yet to be found.