This BITE CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER (story time)

Hi YouTube, how are you doing? Ben, oh man, 20 here tonight and tonight I'll tell you another

story

. I already wrote a

story

about my worst snake

bite

, but

this

is actually the worst

bite

I've had in all

time

. I've been working with animals or reptiles or anything like that, so I've always thought for the last seven eight years that I've been thinking very deeply about making an actual documentary-style film about

this

because it's actually quite interesting but let's move on. and let's go right in so i was walking around looking for rattlesnakes rattlesnakes are one of my favorite snakes in the world.

I acquired this passion since I was about 12 years old. In fact, I was in the Sonoran desert for about two hours outside. from Phoenix when I came across my first rattlesnake and ever since then I've been kind of obsessed so I came home from that trip and I was a native we had the timber rattlesnake so my mission was to find a rattlesnake wooden now let's go fast-forward, he was probably around 22 or 23 years old. I was at an active den site looking for timber rattlesnakes just to get some great pictures to get some video footage that I could get without disturbing the animal and I was actually walking down a nice little ravine slipped a little bit got slipped a bit, you know, I walked a little bit of the above and actually ran into the beautiful Copperhead, nice little viper, got some good shots of him inside the rough edge.

I actually have a good picture of the general area, so it's a little hard to see the snake. I'll actually post it on my Instagram so you guys can go and try to find it, but on top of all that, it all came home. I felt good. I didn't think anything bad had happened. I cleaned myself up after being us from the woods like you would and it felt great. About two weeks later. I know long after the bite. very tingling and i did i dont know what was wrong all i knew was it was really annoying to wear pants i would go crazy like it was just that it was painful it was irritating it was unlike anything i had ever experienced so it was a bit weird i worried too much about it you know i never really liked warm pants anywhere anyway i always work in shorts so who cares you know well i kept up with my day job and about a week then my ankles started to hurt a lot like joints, it was almost like arthritis, but it hurt a lot in both ankles.

I found that out, so I went to the doctor. I was like, hey, I don't know what's going on, but my ankles hurt a lot and they're like, well, that's weird. probably arthritis. I'm like, so you're saying a 22-year-old man has arthritis in both ankles out of the blue and they say yes that's what we're saying mm-hmm doesn't sound very logical but whatever you know I'm not the doctor, i went ahead and walked out of the doctor's office at this point it's getting very hard to support my ankles they're just doing fine in about a week my knees started to move and when i say i was going like i was standing straight and my knees just they gave way, they bent, I fell, this worried me a lot. a lot because I'm slowly but surely losing the ability to walk right now I had to make the decision that some of the high end reptiles some of the things that required a lot of care that were very difficult to handle I had to get rid of because I already i couldn't take it still trying to figure out what's going on i'm getting more and more doctors say it's arthritis say all kinds of things at this point my legs are starting to get very vascular i have a lot of bulging veins in my legs not quite sure why i just I don't know what's going on I wasn't exercising Why all these bulging veins on my legs isn't it?

It doesn't make sense, so I went to one of the bigger hospitals to see what they said it wasn't. Sure if they had all the doctors there everyone was looking at me trying to figure out what was going on. Checking my reflexes. Checking my nerves. They said, yeah, you have major nerve damage in your lower legs like you don't feel a thing. Well, I feel a lot of pain, but I don't eat on the skin. I didn't feel anything. This happens. I try to go to work, but it's almost impossible for me to keep up with my average work schedule.

I would go in for a couple of hours and realized I couldn't stand on my feet long enough to complete my work. I would have to go home, so I would call every other day because I couldn't get up. It was starting to get to my hips. I could feel it. I knew it was affecting my hips and lower back and it was making me very nervous. Now it was bad enough to go uptown and go to the store to get a soda or a candy bar or whatever you know felt like crap I had to eat it's simple be a good diet, right? and my mom went up there later that night or whatever and this lady works on her psyche it's your son okay you know we know he's your son and he looks like he's dead like he looks really bad he's pale ain't moving worth a shit mom it's like I don't.

You know, you know, I don't know what's wrong with them anyway after all that. I went to work another day and a good friend of mine named Travis. a nice guy, you meet a great guy, it's like getting checked for rocky mountain spotted fever. I'm like Rocky Mountain spotted fever. What's that? It's like Lyme disease. You get it from a tick. you're often outside and he's like the kind of sounds like that could be what you have it can affect the nervous system and everything else i don't know exactly how it works but i know it's what i am how i have it asylum i haven't been tested for that, so I went back to the doctors.

I'm like, hey, I know. How do you think I have arthritis and you're saying I'm not in pain even though I can't walk because of the pain? What about Rocky Mountain spotted fever? Could you test me for that? you that for that and lyme disease so i got tested for both it came back positive i had rocky mountain spotted fever so they put me on the very basic medication in about two weeks i was almost back to normal and when I say I could almost stand my joints didn't hurt as much anymore the skin irritation was still there, the vascularity in the leg was still there but I could walk and that was a big plus but overall to this day it makes me crazy wearing pants so a lot people see me in subarctic conditions in chest deep snow wearing shorts and they say you're crazy and I'm like I can't feel my legs and what I feel hurts call me crazy call me whatever but I dress for comfort not really for show not to try to look all that good i'm just wearing what works i know it's a little crazy to think about it i've handled all these poisonous snakes and what it almost killed me if they hadn't found it it would have killed me it was a tick just think about it a tick almost killed me you know the crazy part is i was looking for the timber rattlesnake which is a rattlesnake that is largely hunted of its range people seem to be really terrified of this snake even though it is very reclusive and doesn't come in contact with people very often when it does the snake tends to suffer but if you would have found the timber rattlesnake if the cliff I was on was covered in more wood rat snakes there was actually a study done by the University of Maryland that stated within a daylight saving

time

within the feeding cycle of a wood rattlesnake and I don't send mail I think the study was done on they can eat 2500-4500 ticks in any given season so these snakes of course heat the squirrels they will eat them, the mice will eat the furry vermin that are running around and they will eat them and also ingest the ticks, it doesn't make the snake sick but it definitely helps us so if the block had been more populated there is a good chance that I would never have gotten this, I wouldn't have the general long term side effects of this horrible disease and I know a lot of people in the United States are infected with Lions disease and that is also a horrible disease it comes with a lot of side effects you know, a lot of people ask why do you love snakes so much, why are you so obsessed with snakes especially venomous ones, it just doesn't make sense and I seriously believe I owe my

life

to snakes.

I know that time I didn't save myself, but how many other times: five minutes from the woods that if it wasn't for the snakes, if it wasn't for the rattlesnakes in the woods, the rattlesnakes ate the ticks, maybe I would have contracted the Blinds disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever a long long time ago and never found out what it was and I would have died therefore my opinion I owe my

life

to snakes. If you like snakes, please subscribe to the channel. We will have more snake content. Normally, we will have something here. on the table you can look at I know you had to suffer on my face today I hope you saw a little saltiness in the background that caught your eye instead of just looking at me but I appreciate you made me Make sure you show this print, show this video to your friends and take a flight.