A copperhead bit their son. His parents got the bill. The amount may surprise you.

A 17-year-old was out collecting wood near his home in Hillsborough when he bent down to pick up a branch and a snake bit him on his left hand.

He knew almost immediately that it was a copperhead.

“He knows his snakes; he went to herpetology camp,” said Amy Carabetta, whose son Ian was bitten.

“I was scared,” she said. “His hand started to swell almost immediately.

Carabetta called 911 for an ambulance.

“My hand was really hard to move while I was in the hospital,” Ian said. “It surprisingly wasn’t painful.”

Carabetta was especially scared for her son because he wants to be a carpenter and his left hand is his dominant hand

“It was pretty scary the first night he was in the hospital,” Carabetta said. “I handed him a bottle, and he couldn’t unscrew it with his left hand.”

Ian got the treatment he needed, but when the bill came in the mail a few weeks later, Carabetta was shocked.

“I immediately got it out, put it on the hood of the car and took a picture of it and sent it to my husband,” she said. She then posted it on Facebook.

The bill totaled more than $225,000.

Antivenom alone $200,000

Ian’s hand healed completely, and his father’s insurance helped bring the family’s cost down to $175, Carabetta said.

“I don’t know if it would’ve happened that way if we hadn’t have had the treatment,” she said.

“The patient received 12 vials of antivenom, which cost about $200,000, including the hospital’s markup,” Duke Health officials said in an emailed statement to The News & Observer. “The patient’s insurance paid roughly half of the total amount billed based on its contract with Duke, which provides for a substantial discount. Duke has assumed the remaining balance, and the patient’s total out-of-pocket obligation is $175.”

According to Duke Health, “For many years, antivenom has been a very high-cost drug that is produced in limited quantities, leading to the high cost paid by hospitals.”

Carabetta was relieved to see insurance pay most of the bill but said she could not help but feel for people dealing with snakebites who may not be insured.

Duke Health provides the drug at a 70% discount for people who do not have insurance and the balance may even be written off depending on the person’s financial circumstances, according to a statement from Duke Health.

But antivenom is not always used to deal with copperhead bites. Sometimes, people wait it out.

Felicia Moore, 36, was bitten on Halloween of 2019 on her ankle. Moore, a Cary resident and a friend of Carabetta, was taken to WakeMed, but was not administered antivenom because the swelling had not gone past her knee.

“After seeing Ian’s experience, to see how quickly he recovered in comparison to me, I do think I should have taken the antivenin,” Moore said.

“The recovery was not fun,” she said. “I had bruising on my entire leg, and I couldn’t walk for a couple of weeks.”

If you get a snakebite, call North Carolina Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 to help determine whether to go to the hospital. Some snake bites can be treated at home, The News & Observer reported.

This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 1:52 PM.