The shift in my mental state from bliss into chaos was mayhem. I was two hours from town and I’d just been bitten by a deadly snake. Within moments, my hand started to go numb. If there had been any question that this snake was venomous, this symptom confirmed my worst fears—and heightened them.
As the numbness began to spread through my hand, I started beating my knuckles against a rock on the side of the path. But even after they were bloody and bruised, I felt nothing. Only the sense of numbness creeping up my arm, along with a growing sense of impending doom.
When we finally reached a village, we found a local doctor who looked at the state of my bloody hand with concern. He asked to see a photo of the snake. After a cursory look, he burst out laughing. This snake was not a pit viper. It was, indeed, just a green racer.
From this moment, the speed of the transformation in my hand was astonishing. Within a few seconds, feeling flooded back into my entire arm. Instead of numbness, my hand throbbed with agonizing pain—not from the snakebite, but from the bludgeoning I had given it on my way.
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