A BRISBANE nurse survived a week with life-threatening poison running through her veins after being bitten by a snake in Nepal.
Delmae Ryan stepped on an Asian Pit Viper in Pokhara on September 28 but found Nepal's hospitals did not stock the anti-venom and had to wait three days before being medically cleared to take the 20-hour flight home to Brisbane with a painful and swollen right leg.
Without the anti-venom, she risked bleeding to death from the snake's haemotoxic venom which destroys blood cells and tissue.
Once doctors in Brisbane identified the snake, they began a marathon effort to find the antidote, calling zoos, universities, research labs and anti-venom manufacturers across the country.
The anti-venom was eventually located at Melbourne's Monash University and administered to Mrs Ryan on Sunday, a week after she was bitten.
"I feel very, very lucky. If there's not someone passionate enough to fight for your cause I don't know where I would be," she told reporters from her hospital bed on Monday.
Mrs Ryan, 49, said she feared the worst.
"Before I flew out, I thought the flight may be bad for it," she said.
"It was very scary. I did fear for my life.
"However, I did get a bit complacent when I arrived home.
"I could see the redness on the leg was less. In my mind it was improving."
But tests showed her blood was thinning and she was at serious risk of bleeding to death.
Her blood's ability to clot was "completely off the scale", Princess Alexandra Hospital's emergency physician Dr Colin Page said.
"This is measured in seconds; 10 or 20 seconds (is normal) but her (blood's ability to clot) was greater than 200 seconds."
Ms Ryan said she was throwing herself around trying to move on one leg during the flight and the days before she was admitted into hospital.
All it would have taken is one fall and she could have bled to death, Dr Page said.
"At any one of those times she may have fallen over, hit her head, and potentially suffer a life-threatening haemorrhage in the brain," Dr Page said.
Even one light cut could have led to extensive blood loss.
She is now on the mend and is expected to be back on her feet within a fortnight.
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