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Bethune leaving hospital in Costa Rica on Sunday morning (NZ time) two weeks after being bitten by a deadly snake.
Kiwi conservationist Pete Bethune has been discharged from hospital and is back on his ship after being bitten by one of South America s deadliest snakes.
Bethune was bitten by a deadly fer-de-lance snake just after Christmas while working in the jungle in Costa Rica’s Peninsula de Osa National Park. He has been in hospital for nearly a fortnight. Speaking to
Stuff via video on Sunday (NZ time), a few hours after getting out of hospital, Hamilton-born Bethune said he had a catheter bag on one side, “a dodgy leg on the other” but was “happy to be home, and happy to be alive”.
He was “super looking forward to getting back on the ship and it would be amazing to go home, he said. Bethune said his first few days in hospital were a blur. He was on morphine, and he felt lucid, telling viewers that it was as though you were aware of what was going on but it was “dream like”. The doctor had given him the highest level of antivenom he had ever given a patient – a record that Bethune was quite chuffed about achieving.
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An image of Pete Bethune s escape from a Costa Rican forest after being bitten by a snake.