Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Bite of the Spider

Several days after my grief stricken bout with Mr. Southern Comfort I noticed the red spots on the top of my left foot were worse. It had an luminous quality around the punctures. I had been on an antibiotic for a severe sinus infection so I thought little about it. I do remember that my hangover had been the worst one ever with chills and fever and bouts of vomiting. Not what I would call ordinary for a well seasoned drinker like me. I chalked it up to not eating and went on with my life, at least until I could no longer go on with my life.

About a week or so later I couldn't even put pressure on my foot. I was using a walking stick or Jack's arm to walk and my foot was red in the center and grey around the outsides of the bite, a translucent shiny kind of grey almost silver. The pain was intense and so I decided to head over the mountain to the clinic and find out what on earth had bitten me?

The emergency doctor took one look and said some latin name. I asked for a translation and he said " Brown Recluse Bite" and prescribed a much stronger anibiotic and gave me instructions for caring for my foot. He said it could get much worse if I let it go and showed me pictures of horrendous cavernous ulcers from spider bites. Well, that was enough to scare me into following orders. The local nurse followed up with me and eventually the foot healed. Even so for over 6 months I had times of extreme weakness which came and went unexplained. I attributed it to the bite.

Brown Recluse Spiders are not at all interested in biting people but they hide in houses and can go up to 6 months without food. I believe when I stuck my foot under the radiator in the corner of the bathroom I threatened this spider's domain and he promptly bit my foot. That certainly made me think about using a different form of grief therapy in the future!

For years after I would not let my hands or arms fall off the bed when I was sleeping. I lived in old houses and wanted nothing to do with hiding spiders, or for that matter even bold ones either.

3 comments:

nannykim said...

One of my friends had this bite, but they got on top of it pretty face. Still--it was a horrible sore.

Jamie Willow said...

oh yuck. I hate spiders. blech.

Jennalu said...

You know that spiders crawl into covers to! Nice picture of a spider. Yuke!!!!!!!!!