The Last Wild Men of Borneo by Carl Hoffman

Author:Carl Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Bruno Manser wrestling a python; his fascination with snakes almost killed him when he was bitten by a pit viper in 1989. (Erich and Aga Manser)

Eleven

Pit vipers are not the world’s deadliest snakes, but they inject hemotoxins that destroy red blood cells and surrounding muscle tissue, and prevent clotting, not to mention induce vomiting, dizziness, and splitting headaches. In extreme cases they can cause kidney failure and death. To read the Merck Manual about treating the victim of a pit viper bite is a like a cruel joke, a description of everything Bruno didn’t have and did wrong. “In the field, patients should . . . avoid exertion and be reassured, kept warm, and transported rapidly to the nearest medical facility. Pressure immobilization to delay systemic absorption of venom . . . is not recommended . . . and may cause arterial insufficiency and necrosis. First responders should support airway and breathing, administer O2, and establish IV access in an unaffected extremity while transporting patients. All other out-of-hospital interventions (e.g., tourniquets, topical preparations, any form of wound suction with or without incision . . .) are of no proven benefit, may be harmful.”

Bruno’s bite was a nightmare, the worst-case scenario. He wasn’t even with a regular band of Penan, but with a young couple in the remotest forest. He was soon delirious, burning with a high fever, racked with intense, throbbing pain. The tissue around the bite withered and died, even as the toxin interfered with his blood’s coagulation and his leg ballooned. His heartbeat slowed, his blood pressure sank, his breathing became labored, as flies swarmed during the day and tried to lay eggs in his wound and the no-see-ums attacked at night and the rain poured down in floods. He lay on a floor of branches without blankets, clean bandages, or comforts of any kind, surrounded by a vision of deep green, the smell of moss and decay and earth.

Three weeks after the bite he was still alive, the wound a swollen, festering mass of dead tissue. He couldn’t walk. While he was trying to massage his leg and squeeze the pus out one day, “a piece of flesh suddenly balloons out of the wound—as large as a squirrel’s head. I can see the skin that surrounds the muscle and thickens in the middle to form tendons as shiny as silk. I am scared”—the only time he would ever use the word in thousands of pages of journals and letters. “The muscle, three fingers thick, protrudes farther every day and suddenly exits the wound, as long as a banana, together with pus. Then it becomes clear: the muscle between calf and shin has detached itself below the knee and is now hanging like a long horn out of my leg. The next day, the muscle feels cold. I pinch it with my fingernails—it is completely numb. Has a part of me really died? Quite possibly, after what I have been through in the past few weeks. The pressure of the heavy protrusion on the wound causes further pain.

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