A normal day takes a turn for the worse with dire consequences.
The iconic Kruger National Park in South Africa is a mecca for tourists from across the globe.
Every year its incredible scenery is unveiled, discovered, and rediscovered on safaris with wide-eyed travelers as they trek across the 2.2 million hectares on an adventure of a lifetime.
It is classed as the third largest park in the world and is home to over 500 different species of birds, 12,00 elephants, nearly 3,000 lions, almost 30,000 African Buffalos, as well as leopards, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, and snakes.
It is nature at its wildest, displayed in a setting that at first appears picture-perfect, but at the same time is untamed, unpredictable, majestic. Danie Pienaar loved working here.
In 1998 as a student, his duties involved tracking white rhinos near the Phabeni tributary. Day after day he would record their movements, never tiring of watching them on their migratory tours.
On this particular day in January, the water of the tributary was running deep but Danie had to wade across somehow if he was to continue monitoring the rhinos. He wasn’t concerned about getting wet as the shorts he wore would dry quickly under the heat emanating from the ground itself.
Something caught his eye before he entered the water, though, slithering sneakily on the periphery of his vision. His mind identified it as a snake, a large one, but it wasn’t close so in he went, the water quickly getting waist-deep, his eyes tracking the movements of the herd.
He was only a few paces in when the snake struck.
Even before he looked at his knee, Danie knew he had been bitten. Seeing the four blue-purple bite marks, his worst fears were realized that the snake had struck him twice in two lightning-fast strikes.
The snake had been a Black Mamba. It was one of the most feared snakes in Africa and just two drops of its toxic venom were strong enough to kill an adult. Each of its fangs could hold 20 drops, and Danie had been bitten twice.
He knew the reality of his situation, knew that the venom coursing through his veins contained both neurotoxins and cardiotoxins, one attacking his nervous system and the other speeding towards his heart with every beat.
When the bad taste started in his mouth, followed quickly by an uncomfortable tingling sensation in his fingertips and lips, a feeling of dread ran through him, a feeling that he was going to die.
Venom from a Black Mamba was fatal unless treated quickly. The young student was alone, only a basic inadequate kit on hand, and a long, long way away from the emergency assistance he so desperately needed.
He couldn’t panic, or he was dead.
He had to control his breathing, slow his heart rate, or he was dead.
The hairs on his body shimmered, bringing a chill on the blisteringly hot day. But that wouldn’t last. The ensuing symptoms would be blurred vision, drowsiness, mental confusion followed by paralysis.
His choices were to accept the inevitable, slump under the shade of a tree, or try at the very least to live.
It was impossible for him to know exactly how much venom had been injected by the fangs and with the bite being below the knee, he reasoned that he may just have a chance of survival. He would find out within the hour if he lost all self-awareness or was still able to make rational decisions. That one hour may well be how much time he had left before it was all over.
Somehow, he had to move quickly without elevating the beating of his heart, or the toxins lurking in his bloodstream would shorten the time he had left significantly. It was going to be a challenge, to say the least, and the odds were not in his favor.
Tying a tourniquet just above the bites, he left a note explaining what had happened, just in case he collapsed on his way back. Pocketing his gun, knife, and compass, he headed back resolutely towards where he had parked his pickup truck.
At first, the urge to go as fast as he could walk was overwhelming, the toxic timebomb ticking inside him. Controlling his breathing as much as he could, placing one unsteady step in front of the other, he eventually made it made to the truck, sweating profusely.
He had lost track of time by now and tunnel vision had encroached on his ability to self-analyze, to think critically, to think clearly.
Time was running out.
Flooring the truck, he headed towards the tourist road at a breakneck speed.
Screeching to a halt a few kilometers later, he leaped out of the truck and flagged down the first car he came across.
Barely able to understand his slurred words, the driver and passengers transported him to Pretoriuskop Rest Camp. Unfortunately, the facilities there were inadequate to treat him and he had to be transported by road, as a helicopter was unavailable, to Nelspruit, which was about an hour or so away.
Once arriving at the hospital, barely coherent, he mumbled through his numbing lips and swollen tongue what had happened to him. The doctors were skeptical, doubting that he would still be alive after so much elapsed time if that were the case.
When they finally released the tourniquet that Danie had set in place, things deteriorated in an instant, the last of the venom flooding his system and causing him to black out.
When he came to, unsure how long he had been out, he was on a ventilator, unable to move a muscle yet fully aware of his surroundings. His worst fears screamed in his head that after everything he had gone through to reach the hospital that he was now paralyzed, locked in his body with no way to communicate.
He recalled a similar case where the doctors had thought the patient was in a coma, and panic seized him in its terrifying grip, aware that he could be locked in this state for years, possibly confined to a long, terrifying end attached to a machine.
The venom had rendered him completely immobile and the only time he was able to see was when a nurse or doctor lifted his eyelids to check on his vital responses. Then he would be sent back into the inky void behind his own eyelids, fully aware of his surroundings yet so paralyzed that he was unable even to blink.
This was the worst-case scenario he could ever have imagined – alive yet trapped in his own body. The fact that he was still alive was no consolation under the circumstances.
At this time no anti-venom had been administered, but luck was on his side. Slowly, his own body flushed some of the toxins from his system, allowing him not to move exactly, but at least to twitch a foot almost imperceptibly that got the attention of one of his visitors, Dewald Keet.
Keet alerted the doctors who ascertained that Danie was not actually comatose, and over the next few days, he regained full mobility and was finally released.
For a while, he suffered from cold sweats and it took weeks for the bite marks to vanish, but eventually, he recovered completely and was soon back at work, tracking the rhinos and doing the job he loved.
From that point on he was extremely aware of the dangers lurking on the periphery of his vision. But moreover, he was aware that he had been incredibly lucky to have survived two bites from a Black Mamba isolated as he had been at the time.
He had survived because of his young age, because he had had the wherewithal to apply a tourniquet above the bite marks, because he had been extremely lucky, and just perhaps because it hadn’t been his time to die.