Itsy Bitsy, but What a Venomous Wallop!

I’ve gained a newfound respect for spiders. Had things turned out differently, I may have become a spider hater. That would have been an illogical abhorrence, fueled by emotion. After all, the insect in question was probably minding his own business with no yearning for human contact, let alone confrontation.

The victim, just as unsuspecting and not seeking any insect liaisons, was bitten on the forearm this past Friday morning. She has no memory of the bite or whether it happened in the classroom in which she teaches sixth graders. But she was at her desk that morning when she felt pain as her forearm rested on her desk. Closer examination revealed a pair of raised things resembling little boils inside a small circle of pink. Her immediate diagnosis was some kind of insect bites and the school nurse subsequently concurred. Didn’t seem to be a big deal, though. Insect bites are fairly common in rural America. Unlike urban America, most of our insects prefer being outdoors.

The brown recluse spider doesn't ask for trouble, but be wary anyway.

So it was cleaned off and ointment applied as a soothing measure. By the time my wife got home from school, it was sorer and the pink was more of a red in a widening circle. Still no reason for alarm. Drug store’s still open. Maybe there’s something there for insect bites. Pharmacist was consulted and her reaction was that it might be something worth seeing a doctor about. Doctor’s office was closed, but when I suggested to Mary that we check it out at the E.R., she said, and I quote, “I would be embarrassed to go to the emergency room with an insect bite.” Too trivial, she was suggesting, but I reminded her that the pharmacist had recommended a look-see by a doctor.

“Let’s see if it gets any better by morning,” she replied, or something to that effect, and she swore it was more tender than painful.

Next morning it was nastier looking and an angrier red. She had slept very fitfully. It was a Saturday, so we agreed it was time to go to the hospital. Three hours later we were sitting in an observation room. She had parted with blood, urine and had everything from her pulse to her blood pressure monitored, with a chest x-ray thrown in. The doctor on duty and other personnel were agreeing it was a spider bite—a pair of them—and the biter was most likely a brown recluse spider. Our expectations had been a prescription for antibiotics and then back home. What she got was  a bed at the hospital. She would need to mainline antibiotics and fluids, compliments of dehydration, because this was some serious spider venom.

By mid-afternoon, she was resting comfortably, and a fever that had climbed to 103 was apparently dropping. She needed some sleep and I had errands to do. About an hour later, as I was driving back to the hospital, my cell rang and my wife was telling me, “You’ll want to get back here. The doctor wants to cut this thing out of me.” Her temperature had spiked up to 105 and the red was spreading up her arm, She sounded calm, but there was that trace of fear in her voice that she couldn’t hide from me after more than four decades together.

I passed a few vehicles I wouldn’t have passed otherwise, and my speed was well into the double figures above that posted. The scene when I walked in the room was blood on bandages and all over her arm, with the doctor cutting and a trio of nurses assisting as she lay in bed. Local anesthetic was blocking the pain, and Mary gave me a reassuring look, almost apologetic, as if to  say, “Sorry I had to bring you back for this.”

The climbing temperature and the skin turning almost black around the bites, signifying the the skin had died with the poison collapsing the blood vessels, had prompted the doctor to take this action. It seems to have worked and, though there is a big chunk out of her arm, which will mean an impressive scar, the real healing commenced from that dramatic bedside surgery.

Here’s the scary part. Had we waited much longer, Mary could have lost her arm or worse. The bite from the brown recluse spider can be life threatening if not treated aggressively within 48 hours.

This spider is an import from warmer climes to the south and west, such as Arkansas and Oklahoma, but he will hitch a ride in a transport that provides sufficient warmth. Once here, they prefer to stay inside and though, as their name implies, they try to avoid human contact, they have been known to crawl into clothes hanging in closets or into beds where they will end up reacting venomously to contact with human skin.

You could said that this spider is another import of the natural gas industry, because many of the workers and their vehicles come from locations where the brown recluses prefer to reside. That’s something else to blame on gas drilling, but the truth is brown recluse spiders have other means of travel and, though their relocation has been fairly recent, some of them were here before serious gas drlling began on the Marcellus Shale. However, it also means they will become more numerous in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

So beware of brown spiders. Despite their aversion to your acquaintance, contact may be unavoidable and the bite that results shouldn’t be taken lightly.