Well! What a day! Never believe what you hear on the news, especially on a slow news day! When there's no news they become even more keen than usual to exaggerate. It was such a slow news day that my story not only made national headlines, but was even reported overseas! :shock: I can't understand how a trivial event like this can become international news!
Contrary to what a certain ambulance driver with a big and unreliable mouth might lead you to believe, funnily enough, my "exotic" Death Adders actually originate from Australia (to be fair, at least that part of his misinformation was probably an honest mistake rather than a deliberate lie), the amount of venom was trivial and certainly far less than enough to warrant the use of antivenom. I didn't collapse after paramedics arrived, I certainly didn't hallucinate and wasn't disoriented, in an 'altered frame of mind' or anything similar. One or two of the ambulance staff grossly abused their positions and dispensed misinformation and sadly, some of this appears to have been deliberate lies, not to mention the disgusting breach of privacy. I'll be following this up over the next few days.
Yes, I did have an anaphylactic reaction, which was rapidly reversed by the standard technique (adrenaline injection) without further complication. As you'll have seen, I was happily joking and laughing with television staff as soon as I saw them, and I'd been happily chatting and mucking around with medical staff for hours before the story about me being almost dead/in a critical condition/etc first hit the media. When I first heard that the story had hit the media I wasn't really concerned, in fact, I was simply a little surprised that anyone would be interested in such a trivial event. When I heard about what was being said, I was unhappy about the misinformation, etc etc, especially in regard to snakes being given a bad wrap, and so I put aside my plans for the day and agreed to play games with the media circus in order to give out the true story and put snakes in a more favourable light. Believe me, if I hadn't done this the situation would have been a lot worse!
If you saw me on the television, you'll have seen that I was completely happy, joking away with the media guys and feeling fine, with no more than a tiny bit of a reaction at the site of the bite (like a mild bee sting - maybe they should have done a
really scarey story about paper, and the horrors of papercuts :lol: ). After all the interviews and watching the news, I went to the VAAH meeting this evening with the speaker, John "Gecko Wrangler" McGrath, and all who were present saw that I was in perfect health.
To be honest, my biggest personal concern (the biggest non-personal concern was the misinformation and bad publicity for snakes) was losing my car keys in all the commotion and not being able to get my car in for the service I'd booked. For those who have been concerned about me personally; I ended up finding my keys and the mechanic was thrilled to hear that I was the one he'd been hearing about all day and was more than pleased to reschedule the work, so, I am fine. Having said that, I had things I wanted to do today and the delays have meant that it's now getting on for 5am and so even though there's a lot more to be said, I'm going to leave it here for now (I've posted a bit more elsewhere online, but I'm feeling like I'd rather sleep than go on!). I'll type more later, and feel free to ask more questions which in time I will address, but I plan to sleep in, so I probably won't be typing more until Satuday night or some time Sunday.
Thank you for the hundreds of SMSes and calls I recieved today, wishing me well. Your concern is greatly appreciated and I can assure you that I'm fine
I'm sorry to be unable to respond to every SMS (there really were just too many, my inbox constantly filled, was deleted and was refilled during most of the day) and I'm sorry I missed so many phone calls, the phone was simply calling almost nonstop a lot of the time.