We do many deliveries here at Reliable Couriers, and thought it would be fun to start a blog series on some of our most interesting same day deliveries that we have done. In this situation we wanted to give you one of our most memorable, rewarding and interesting deliveries we have done in 2022.
We provide the usual medical deliveries including medical specimen deliveries, blood samples, covid tests, prescription drugs, medical equipment, etc. But sometimes we get a request for a stat medical delivery which is a bit more unusual. In this case it would have been a client that contacted us to request a delivery from Toledo to Milwaukee. The client did not exactly specify why this delivery was so urgent until the very end of the conversation. They requested that we deliver some venom from a snake at the zoo to a hospital.
Our customer let us know that this was an emergency delivery, and that it needed to be in Milwaukee as fast as possible. Unfortunately flying out this venom would not have been possible because it was windy (so no helicopter could fly it) and commercial flights for a hand carry courier would not have been available because it was already 5pm and the flight schedules would not match up. They desperately needed to get this driven so we dispatched our courier who arrived within 20 minutes to pick up the newly milked snake venom. The customer also revealed that their patient had been bitten by an Indonesian Pit Viper. Now maybe you have not heard of an Indonesian Pit Viper, but they are extremely dangerous as their bites more often than not prove to be fatal. Also these snakes can be either blue or a bright green and are not native to the united states.
What’s more is most of the time these snakes are not in the United States and are illegal to own as pets. From what our driver was told the individual had possibly obtained this snake in a not so legal way and was playing with it and got bit by it. The patient was in the hospital and desperately needed anti venom from this particular species of snake, and since these snakes are not indigenous to the United States the only place to get the venom was the zoo.
The snake bitten patient’s life depended on this anti venom, and we were extremely proud to have a rush medical courier available that picked it up within 20 minutes and drove for 6 and a half hours straight to get this patient this life saving venom so the hospital could make anti venom from it. We managed to get it delivered before 10pm CST and the patient eventually made a recovery.
We are extremely proud of this delivery and find it to be one of our most interesting courier deliveries of this year so far. Not only was our medical courier extremely satisfied to be able to save someone’s life by delivering this treatment quickly, she also got a standing ovation when she managed to deliver it in time at the hospital.