neil vs. the snake

well...i am exhausted. but i think i am finally calming down.
neil was on a camping trip with his boss. neil likes snakes. neil has been catching snakes since he was a little boy. neil spots a snake, he grabs it. this time, he grabbed one of tennessee's best: a copperhead. and it got him on the right index finger. neil mutters one sentence, and the world goes black. he can't move, he can't see. normally, snake bites are not this fast, and not this severe...but we find out later, at the hospital, that neil is allergic to snake bites. so he went down and out fast, within one minute...to make a long story short: his vacation was cut short, at least the camping portion of it was, because he spent the next 2 days in two different hospitals. neil's father, his stepmother, and myself drove all night on saturday to go get him. it was awful, seeing him in the hospital, with a huge, puffy face. so scary, i cannot even describe all that i was thinking or feeling from the time i found out until we got to him. he's doing much better now, on steroids and antibiotics and hopefully taking it easy, although he did go to work today...he's crazy, what can i say?? he really lucked out, in every way possible because if he had tried to cut the wound and suck the poison out, he could have gotten horrible tissue damage. and this boy is an atrist--he needs those lower extremities!! oh, i could go on about how bad it could have been, but right now, i am just sooooo soooo glad that my guy is okay. it did not look so good at first.
and what's worse, a long-time animal handler dies the very next day. someone who had been doing stuff with snakes and crocs his whole life.......dead. thanks to a stingray. it's terrible and i am so sad. steve irwin was the first one on television to do what he did. and my little sister loved him from the start, making us all watch his shows. my whole family feels sad. it really makes me realize how lucky we were with neil's accident.