It was almost exactly two years to the day that a coastal taipan nearly took young Queensland boy Eli Campbell’s life.

With the anniversary of that fateful day approaching, Eli and his family went out to a local café, and who should happen to be there but three of the very paramedics who help save him.

The bittersweet, chance reunion last month left everyone close to tears, Eli’s mother Brittany Cervantes, who snapped a photo of the moment, told nine.com.au.

“I just said, ‘Oh my gosh this is so perfect. I was like, really how can that be, two days before the anniversary and there everyone was. What are the chances of that happening?

“Everyone was fighting back tears. It was just amazing.”

Eli Campbell has made a remarkable recovery since a coastal taipan almost took his life two years ago. (Supplied)

Eli, who is now four years old, was collecting chicken eggs on the family’s remote property in Agnes Water, on the Queensland central coast, when the taipan struck and bit him on the leg in September 2016.

The closest hospital was one and a half hours away.

Ms Cervantes, who had previously worked in emergency services in the US, swooped into action. “I could see the bite and I could see the blood. So I scooped him up quickly, I knew that he shouldn’t walk and circulate that venom through his body,” she said.

With an emergency operator instructing on the phone, Ms Cervantes and her husband Giles Campbell bandaged Eli’s leg, and used a stick from a nearby plant as a splint to stop him from bending it.

Agonising minutes ticked by as the couple waited for the paramedics to arrive.

“We were in the driveway waiting for the ambulance and that was about the time Eli started to vomit and you actually knew he was envenomated so it was getting pretty ugly, really quickly,” Ms Cervantes said.

After the paramedics arrived, young Eli went into cardiac arrest.

“This paramedic was sweating and he was just so focussed because he was trying to do everything he could to get Eli what he needed, and there was a cardiac arrest happening, and it was just full on,” Ms Cervantes said.

“We are so grateful to the paramedics. They were our only line of help.”

From there Eli was airlifted to Bundaberg Hospital, where he was given antivenom and placed in an induced coma.

Blind and unable to walk or talk

Eli was left almost completely blind and unable to talk or walk for almost three months after the accident.

“He had to relearn how to sit up, how to eat. For a long period of time we had to keep the lights really low for his eyes and he could only see little light spots,” Ms Cervantes said.

Eli, pictured in hospital after his snake bite. (Supplied)

Along the way, there were many bittersweet moments in Eli’s recovery, such as when they discovered he could see again, she said.

“I remember I was pushing him through the rehab ward at the hospital and I was just walking past the TV and Paw Patrol was on.

“That was his favourite show before this all happened, and his head followed the TV as we passed. I was just like, wait a minute. So I let him watch and he was laughing at all the appropriate times.

“I was thinking, he shouldn’t be able to see that. Then his paediatrician walked past and he did a double take as well.

Looking back on those bittersweet moments now, they just crush you. Your heart breaks into a million pieces, but at the time, you are just like, ‘wow, there is hope’.”

In the two years since the accident, Eli had made a remarkable recovery, his mum said.

“He is doing really, really well. He is four-and-a -half now and he is running and talking. Most people have no idea. They just think he’s a normal little boy.”

The biggest health concern now for Eli was his epilepsy, which he developed in the days after the snake bite while he was in hospital, she said.

Seizures he had never had before

Having been focused solely on Eli’s recovery for two years, Ms Cervantes said the added stress of her son’s unpredictable seizures was immense.

“He was previously well, so epilepsy and having these seizures is something completely new to us. And honestly it’s thrown my partner and I into an absolute state.”

“We’ve got PTSD and anxiety. We have got seizure monitors, he can’t sleep alone because that’s typically when his seizures happen.”

Eli pictured in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber his family purchased to help aid his recovery. (Supplied)

Every 3-6 months Eli had been having full body seizures where he lost consciousness, with the episodes largely triggered by illness-related fevers, she said.

However, just recently, the family had been given some hope by changes that appeared to be taking shape in Eli’s epilepsy.

The seizures had become slightly more frequent, but were far less severe, only lasting for 30 seconds or so before subsiding naturally.

Eli’s parents credit a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which the family purchased for $16,000 last year with money raised on GoFundMe, with helping aid his recovery.

One of the biggest things we did was buy a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. They are used in the US to treat brain injuries and epilepsy by helping deliver oxygen to oxygen-starved parts of the brain,” she said.

Building a “snake-proof” sanctuary

The family have now also moved back home to Agnes Water, after having lived in Brisbane for several months to be closer to Eli’s specialists.

Eli now has a younger brother, 18 month-old Lucas, and Ms Cervantes admitted the possibly of one of the boys being bitten by a snake was never far from her mind.

“We live on a 40-acre block, but we had everything cleared and levelled near the house, so it’s all open. We filled any gaps and holes in rocks with concrete so snakes can’t hide.

A builder had also installed a “snake-proof” fence around the boys’ outdoor play area, she said.

Eli on his fourth birthday with mum Brittany Cervantes, dad Giles Campbell and younger brother Lucas. (Supplied)

“We’ve built this little snake-free play area but every single time you go outside you check the play area for snakes.

“The anxiety is very real, you just feel that it’s going to happen again, that it could happen again, even though, as people say, the odds of it even happening the first time were so low.”

Living in a such a regional area, far from the hospital, continued to be a big concern, Ms Cervantes said.

‘Stock ambulance stations with anti-venom’

Ms Cervantes said she would love to see antivenom stored at all rural ambulance stations, in addition to regional hospitals.

“Something that I would really like to make happen is to bring anti-venene to our local ambulance station. We are regional, we are an hour-and-a-half from our local hospital. At the moment we have irakanji anti-venene, but not snake anti-venene.”

Eli and his mother Brittany Cervantes at their home in Agnes Water. (Supplied)

The mother said she remembered vividly the look on the paramedic’s face when he was told the anti-venom had not been brought with the rescue chopper for Eli, as he had been led to believe was happening.

“He had told us, ‘Ok the antivenom should be here quite quick, it should be here with the helicopter. And it wasn’t. I could just see the paramedic’s face when they told him, ‘No, we don’t have it’. It just fell and he was thinking the window of opportunity was closing rapidly.”

Currently, there are no ambulance stations in Australia that store antivenom.

It is understood that the possibility of a cardiac arrest or severe adverse reaction to anti-venom means medics are reluctant to administer anti-venom outside of a hospital setting.

There is also the difficulty of identifying what type of snake was involved, however, there are now polyvalent anti-venoms available which can treat bites from several different types of snakes.

On average, there 400-500 snake bite hospitalisations in Australian per year, and two or three snake bite fatalities.

So far in 2018, there have been four fatalities.

A Coastal Taipan, similar to the snake that bit Eli. (AAP)

Earlier this year, the head of the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU) David Williams warned that fatalities in Australia could rise if regional hospitals became complacent about storing anti-venom.

It was a message the unit, which is based at the University of Melbourne, is still spreading, the unit’s evolutionary toxinologist Timothy Jackson told nine.com.au.

“We certainly advise that these hospitals do keep a stock of anti-venom.

“We heard there was a trend (towards small, regional hospitals giving up their stocks of anti-venom). Snake bite is rare and it’s not uncommon for these places to not use their stock of anti-venom, which is an expensive product.

“They are expiring on the shelf and so they think we don’t need it. Which is not very good statistical reasoning.

“Yes, it’s an expensive product, yes snake bite is rare, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen tomorrow, and if it does happen the only effective treatment is anti-venom.

“Anti-venom is the central component of any treatment plan for any envenoming.”