KOCHI: The lesson that one shouldn’t take things lightly and always communicate with family members was learnt by 16-year-old Abin at a great cost. The ordeal that he and his family went through will surely make him appreciate life, which he got back thanks to the efforts of a team of doctors.
Surely, angels must have been looking out for him, said the doctors of Rajagiri Hospitals. Abin would have never thought that a little misadventure would land him in a battle with death. According to his parents, the night on which the events unfolded, Abin was coming home after spending some time with his friends. “We had told him not to take the usual shortcut he takes to reach home.
He usually jumps over a compound wall to reach our house and on that particular night too he took the shortcut. Abin jumped over the wall to land right in front of a viper, which bit him within a fraction of a second,” they said.
However, Abin didn’t inform anybody at home and simply pressed out the blood from the wound. He then washed the wound with soap and kept mum about the incident overcome with guilt. When his parents inquired about the cut on his leg, he blamed the stones on the road. But late into the night, Abin began vomiting and the area around the wound swelled up.
“His parents took him to a hospital nearby where they took an X-ray. Since the X-ray ruled out broken bones, they went back home. But the next morning his whole body swelled up and a blood test revealed a sharp decrease in platelet count. He was referred to Rajagiri Hospital. But throughout the entire ordeal, Abin remained silent about the cause of the symptoms,” said the doctors.
Abin was taken to Rajagiri Hospital 16 hours after he was bitten by the snake. He was admitted in the Paediatric ICU. “However, after his condition deteriorated, Abin was shifted to the Medical Intensive Care Unit by Dr M N G Nair, medical director, Rajagiri Hospital,” said the hospital authorities.
Since he showed symptoms of snake bite, he was immediately referred for a toxin test and was given the anti-venom vaccine. “It was his grandmother who found out he was bitten by a snake. Abin’s parotid glands also had swelled up and this indicated he was bitten by a viper. Since he had already spent 16 hours post-snake bite without treatment, all his major organs were affected. It would have even led to his death,” said Dr Jaicob Varghese, Senior Consultant and HOD, Critical Care Medicine, Rajagiri Hospital.
His blood stopped clotting, kidneys went out of order, eyesight started failing and pituitary gland became defective. All these issues had to be addressed. For the next 50 days, Abin was on dialysis and plastic surgery was done on his leg. He was referred to a centre in Coimbatore to get his eyes treated and the doctors there were able to save his sight. “Saving Abin’s life has been a big achievement. The combined effort of all medical professionals and by God’s grace we could give back Abin to his parents,” said Dr Varghese.