A COOL head and quick thinking helped 11-year-old Shannon Dillon live to tell the tale after a potentially-deadly snakebite.
Shannon followed her snakebite safety lessons to the letter after a run-in with a tiger snake on her family's property at Lethbridge, the Geelong Advertiser reports.
Shannon had gone to the family stables to feed her horse at 6.30pm on Monday and was bitten as she reached for some hay.
"I reached out and it came out really fast," she said.
"It felt like a hard knock on my hand and I knew it was a snake."
Rather than panic, Shannon remembered advice to stay calm and keep her heart rate down.
"I grabbed my hand and walked back to the house," she said.
"I was crying a lot but I just walked slowly.
"It started to sting and I went pale and got a really bad headache."
Shannon's father, Paul, made her sit down and keep calm while he wrapped her hand in a pressure bandage and elevated the arm.
They met the ambulance halfway to the hospital and a blood test revealed the bite had injected venom into Shannon's bloodstream.
"She's pretty tough so I knew something was wrong when I saw her crying," Mr Dillon said. "She's never like that.
"When we got to the hospital it was panic stations once they realised venom was in her system."
A difficult night followed as Shannon's parents waited anxiously by her bedside.
"I would go really sweaty and hot and start retching, and that went on and off for hours," Shannon said.
"I finally got some sleep and feel a lot better now, but my hand is swelling and stings a bit."
Shannon learned how to deal with snakebites at Lethbridge Primary School, where she is going into year 6, and said she would take the incident in her stride.
"I've never really been afraid of snakes and it hasn't really put me off," she said.
"My advice to other people would be to wear shoes and long sleeves somewhere where there might be snakes and always look at the ground."
