Brown Recluse Spider Bite Almost Blinds Student, Rots Ear
Nikki Perez of Texas was just an ordinary student at the Texas Christian University when something extraordinary happened and nearly left her blind. She suffered a bite from the poisonous brown recluse spider, and experts fear that many more bites may occur as the brown recluse population grows.
Perez was sitting at the airport with her boyfriend, Eric, when she felt "a nasty pinch" on the back of her neck.
"Next, I saw something crawling over my face and over my eye," she told Britain's Daily News. "I yelled for Eric to help me, and when he saw the spider crawling over my face, he swatted it to the floor and stamped on it."
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Perez had the insight to wrap the dead spider in a tissue to be able to show doctors.
"I felt funny instantly. It was only a small hospital, and they had never seen a spider before. They gave me some steroids and told me to keep an eye on it, but as soon as I got in the car, I could feel that my entire head was starting to swell up," she explained.
That was only the beginning of what would be a frightening ordeal for the 21-year-old.
"I went straight to the emergency department of my local hospital. I was lucky that there was a spider bite expert on duty, and he took one look at the spider and said, 'That's an immature female brown recluse spider.'"
Unfortunately there was nothing the hospital could do to help Perez, and she was sent home to wait for further symptoms to appear. According to experts, side effects of a brown recluse bite include pain and redness at the bite site, vomiting and fever, itching and muscle pain.
Other effects include necrosis, or skin rot, and in some severe cases, particularly those of children, death.
"My ear basically started to rot right on schedule with the doctor's predictions. Then it started spreading to my other eye. I was going blind … it was terrifying. It was spreading all over my head, which actually felt like a bit of a relief as the pain was so concentrated behind my ear," Perez said.
Perez actually photographed the entire experience, from the first bite to being fully healed, which didn't happen until after a short hospital stay and skin grafts on her rotted ear. She has returned to her studies at the university after only missing a few days of work.
