Brown Recluse bite!

[Skidancer]

I got bit by one in college once. I got pretty bad blood poisoning, but I had no medical insurance and we had to go the "home remedy" route: dripping hot candle wax on the offending injury. Holy shit that hurt! I passed out from the pain, but I began to feel better within 45 minutes. Keep a close eye on that one. Red blood streaks on a pathway to your heart are a sure sign of bad things to come. I hear those pictures someone posted are no joke!

Good Luck!

[INDY GS]

What the hell? My neighbor lady just got bit by a brown recluse a week ago, the docs have her on all kinds of meds and topical shit to keep her forhead from melting away.

I had never even heard of a brown recluse before this week, now two bites?

[Captain Gus]

Oy! What would cause a thumb to disintegrate like that in 10 days? What type of poison does the spider inject?

Edit - Well, it appears that there are only two types of spider venom - nerotoxic and necrotic. And seeing the damage done to the hand, seems the recluse spider dispenses some fairly nasty necrotic poison. And thanks to Ice below for setting me straight.

[iceman]

Oy! What would cause a thumb to disintegrate like that in 10 days? What type of poison does the spider inject?

What do you mean, what type? It's Brown Recluse Spider venom.

And holy shit those pics are nasty. That should come with some kind of a warning.

There are a lot of biting spiders, let's hope it was something else that bit him.

[StroupSkier]

Damn, this picture looks like my mom's leg when she got bit:



Wait a minute, they give credit to NC State, maybe it was hers...

They are a nasty little creature. Images of my moms leg being devoured by the poison after her bite are the reason I am petrified of spiders now.

ALL SPIDERS MUST DIE!!!

[rossibandit]

I had a case of cellulitis (infection) in my foot/ankle once. At first I though it was just a sprained ankle, and I wasn't going to do anything, but it was really warm and swelled up. Mom told be to go to the ER, but I wasn't on planning on doing that. Well, the Docotor said it was a good thing that I came in because it was an infection. I was on IV antibiotics for 4 days after that. No idea what caused the infection, but the doc figured that cracks in the skin from wearing sandles all summer might have let an infection into my foot.

[robokill1981]

I had a case of cellulitis (infection) in my foot/ankle once. At first I though it was just a sprained ankle, and I wasn't going to do anything, but it was really warm and swelled up. Mom told be to go to the ER, but I wasn't on planning on doing that. Well, the Docotor said it was a good thing that I came in because it was an infection. I was on IV antibiotics for 4 days after that. No idea what caused the infection, but the doc figured that cracks in the skin from wearing sandles all summer might have let an infection into my foot.

Did all this happen while you were at band camp?

edit- forgot the winky/smile

[rossibandit]

Did all this happen while you were at band camp?

No, but my foot could have seriously been messed up if I hadn't got the ER when I did.

[freshie247]

My older brother was a bad ass when I was a kid,he was tough as nails. He got bit by a BR spider on his ankle when he was 16,it was the only time I ever saw him cry.He got out of bed,felt awful & banged the bitten leg against the bed frame.In what must have been extremely painful eruption,it exploded this huge pool of puss. He went to the doctor everyday & had his necrosis soaked in this acid wash to remove the dead skin.The scab on the bite site looked like a pizza that had been in the oven for 2 days.It made me want to puke looking at it.It got to the size of a small tea cup.It took months to heal & he has a silver dollar sized concave scar on his leg to this day.

I hope it's something else Phish,but if not,the good news is it's above your boot! BOL brother!

[MOHSHSIHd]

i dont know what the hell it is, but its not getting any worse or streaking or anything...


I truly think the feverish chills was just me being/getting sick......i mean i was soaked head to toe in the rain/snow mix yesterday hiking around the woods with a chainsaw....not good

[Viva]

Edit - Well, it appears that there are only two types of spider venom - nerotoxic and necrotic. And seeing the damage done to the hand, seems the recluse spider dispenses some fairly nasty necrotic poison. And thanks to Ice below for setting me straight.

Spiders inject a necrotizing venom to turn their prey's innards to liquid. They then drink this. Kinda like making a smoothy without the blender.

[BENDOR]

go to Dr. did you see those pics ?

[Steezus Christ]

When I was living in Mississippi 2 summers ago, the military dorms had a rampant Brown Recluse problem and quite a few people were getting bit. One dude I knew was bit on one of his toes. It didn't rot off but I guess it affected his nerves on one side of his face because he couldn't blink one eye or move one side of his mouth for a couple of weeks!

I didn't sleep too well after that happened. I psyched myself out so much thinking every little moving leg hair on my body was one of those little fuckers trying to get me.

Glad to hear your bite isn't getting any worse. Hopefully it is just your aids flaring up again.

[MOHSHSIHd]

Hopefully it is just your aids flaring up again.

thanks for the laugh...

[MacDaddy]

This is some scary shit I hope it was not a BR

good luck man! you ok?

[Darkside]

I was in the middle of eating breakfast...suddenly I'm not hungry anymore.

Good luck, phish.

[uglymoney]

I did a quick search on the recluse and came across this almost immediately... putting these photo's in doubt. But what do I know? If it creeps or crawls I kill it.

Source:

http://spiders.ucr.edu/hyperbole2003.html

The alleged brown-recluse-caused thumb wound

Another Internet Spider Hoax?

I have recently received many emails regarding an alleged brown recluse spider bite to a thumb. Here is my response.



I have received this set of images from many people starting in June 2003. It is possible that this is a recluse bite however, the stories surrounding this series of images are starting to acquire the makings of an urban legend. I have now heard that this wound supposedly was a recluse bite that occurred at a military base in Missouri, in Wisconsin, Texas, Montana, Ohio, California, Alberta Canada, Costa Rica and supposedly was a hobo spider bite in British Columbia. Obviously, this one series of pictures cannot be a recluse bite in all of these places so one should REALLY question the validity of this information that is circulating. Unfortunately, I have heard that readily-accepting people are using these images for presentations in paramedic classes etc. which may be spreading misinformation rather than educating people. The picture of the spider itself is not of the spider that caused the wound but is a stock photo from an Ohio university website. This image was used in 2002 in a very hyperbolic news story in Long Island. Although it is possible that this is a recluse bite, no one can seem to verify where the alleged bite occurred, whether a spider was caught in the act of biting or at the scene of the crime, whether the victim was tested for additional etiologic agents of necrosis such as bacterial infection, if a doctor actually made the diagnosis or it was a self-diagnosis from the victim, if the diagnosis came from an area of the country that actually has brown recluses, etc.



However, the main effect that this set of images will have is to cause paranoia in the non-arachnological public, bring out all the "hell, yeah" stories of people who have some alleged brown recluse story and will proliferate once again the hyperbolic message about recluses. One of the forms of this series that I saw was a statement something like, "warn people - save a life". Once again, hyperbole. I have recently added a webpage to my spiders.ucr.edu website lifting quotes from an article by Phillip Anderson, a Missouri dermatologist who specialized on brown recluse bites for over 30 years. Basically here is a summary from his article and several since then by other authors.



*

Almost all brown recluse bites heal very nicely without medical intervention.
*

Only 3% of brown recluse bites require skin grafts.
*

Despite the fact that lots of people believe that brown recluses are deadly, there are only about 8 reported deaths from possible brown recluse bites in the medical literature, Philip Anderson states that there is still not one VERIFIED death from a brown recluse bite and none of the alleged fatal cases are convincing.
*

Often physicians will make a recluse bite worse by going in and messing with it by removing tissue and that outcome for most recluse bite situations is very promising with general care. One condition of skin necrosis, pyoderma gangrenosum, definitely gets worse when tissue is removed.



I get lots of people contacting me stating that their doctors diagnosed them with recluse bites and then gave antibiotics. Although antibiotics are not a bad idea overall, they do nothing to counteract the effects of venom. Antibiotics kill bacteria. The correct treatment for recluse bites is simply RICE therapy (rest, ice, compression and elevation). So therefore when a doctor prescribes antibiotics for a “brown recluse bite”, the doctor is either treating it like a bacterial infection or prescribing the incorrect remedy.



The analogy I like to use with these images is that of a car accident. If you show a car wreck where the driver was going 130 miles an hour and then hit a bridge, the car would be totally wrecked into dozens of twisted pieces, body parts strewn all over the place and it would be horrendous. If people reacted to this the way they are reacting to the thumb picture, then they would make the assumption that every car wreck is just as catastrophic, cars are to be feared and no one should ever drive because they will end up obliterated across two counties. However, we all know that many car accidents are just bumper scrapers or fenderbenders, more serious accidents involve broken windows and minor injuries, even more serious and lesser common accidents involve smashed up cars and broken bones and maybe death. Similar to recluse bites, most bites are minor and heal by themselves, some are more serious and require more healing time and leave a scar, even more serious and less common bites require extensive supportive medical care and possibly skin grafts. However, the typical case for a brown recluse bite is minor in effect and prospects for healing are excellent.



One of the very real problems with recluse bites (and any arthropod bite for that matter) is that the bite causes itching, the victim scratches, introduces a secondary bacterial infection from grungy fingernails and such, a horrific wound shows up and then the wound is solely blamed on the arthropod when the real culprit is the bite victim him/herself. Additionally, besides horrific lesions being very rare in recluse bite situations, horrific recluse-induced wounds are typically found in obese people because recluse venom really melts away adipose tissue. It does very little damage in muscular tissue. This wound is on the hand of a person who does not look obese as well as the hand is not an area of the body with lots of adipose tissue in comparison to the stomach and buttocks where most of the wounds in the obese occur. So, this is one strong argument against this injury being a recluse bite and therefore, possibly having a different causative agent.



So the final summary on this is that if it indeed is a brown recluse bite, then it is truly one of the rare, horrific ones however, there is not sufficient information provided with this image to ascertain whether it is credible or not. Yes, indeed, it is a horrible wound but unless a spider was found in the act of biting, there is no more reason to assume that this is a brown recluse bite than to assume that it is necrotizing bacteria or pyoderma gangrenosum or several other medical afflictions that manifest in the dermatologic eruption that can occur. And a recent article of mine shows how unlikely recluse bites are: a family in Kansas collected over two thousand brown recluses in 6 months, have been living there for 7 years and still have shown no evidence of a bite. This latter message is rarely advertised by the hyperbolic news media or the easily-scared general public because people have a tendency to overreact and want to believe the worse about a situation.



Please send this message back to whomever sent you the thumb images. Below my name is a list of my brown recluse publications, most of them in medical journals.



Rick Vetter

Entomology

Univ. Calif. Riverside

Riverside, CA 92521

[Arty50]

Another common misconception is that brown recluses exist in California. They don't:

http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html

It looks like Colorado isn't a common area for them either.

[splat]

OK, I can't miss this opportunity to chime in with some very limited experience, to be used for educational purposes only.

My daughter, Emily, came home one day from the first grade and told me how she had learned about this terrible spider which, if it bites you, can be deadly or cause your skin to fall off. She was all wide-eyed, intense, and frightened about the whole story they told her in class. It had obviously made quite an impression on her, as she kept rattling off details.

When she got done telling me about all the horrible things this spider bite can cause, I asked her what the name of the spider was.

"It's the Brown-Eyed Cluse Spider," she said.

"And it's that dangerous?" I asked her.

"Oh, yeah"

Almost busting a gut inside with her mispronounciation, I looked at her quite seriously and said " If it's that bad, do you really want to get close enough to see what color it's eyes are?"

[Tri-Ungulate]

Phish,

So yeah, it may well be a recluse bite, can't tell for certain based on your pic, but the story fits with the presentation, and the symptoms outside of the bite may well be part of the process. Trackhead gives pretty much the best advice, as would be expected with his background.

We sometimes give dapsone if the necrosis is starting to look like it's going to progress within 12-48 hours, since there are some uncontrolled trials/case reports that indicate it damps down the local inflammatory component of cutaneous loxoscelism (from the Latin name for the spider genus, Loxoceles). Steroids are sometimes given for the same reason, again without great data to back it up, but it's a more-or-less pretty benign treatment. Dapsone can have some side effects with certain people genetically prone to rare types of 'fragile blood' anemias, though. The antibiotics TH mentions are not for the spider bite itself, more to treat any potential for cellulitis (skin superinfection) caused by surface bacteria. Sometimes a tetanus shot is given for shits 'n grins, as well.

Otherwise, it's just supportive care - ice packs, anti-inflammatories (tylenol or Vitamin I), rest, elevation, etc for the vast majority of cases. As uglymonkey/Rick Vetter's note mentions, it's pretty damned unlikely you'll die, or even get a significant necrotic lesion from a recluse bite (though another reference I looked up mentions someting about a 20% rate for some kind of necrosis for all affecteds). Something to check if your flulike symptoms don't get better would be general blood tests to make sure you're not undergoing secondary systemic reactions to the bite. Though pretty rare, these can potentially be somewhat serious, so keep an eye on how you're feeling (and how much you're peeing, since kidneys can be affected) without getting too fussed about the whole thing. If you're not getting any better, a return visit to the ER might be in order.

You'll prolly be fine, just keep the heads up on the lesion and your symptoms.

Good luck and take it easy.