Almost two months ago, The Voice star Meghan Linsey took to Instagram to show her followers that she had been bitten by the venomous brown recluse spider. The graphic photo depicted a massive wound on her cheek, with the venom creating necrotic tissue, leaving Linsey with a hole on her face.
Luckily, Linsey made a recovery from the bite, which could haven proven fatal if the venom had spread far enough.
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Throughout the process, Linsey regularly posted photos of how the wound had been healing. The first photo she posted included the caption, “These pics are hard to share, but I think it’s important for me to be open with you guys. Everything isn’t perfect all of the time.”
Now that Linsey is in a more stable place, she felt comfortable opening up about the entire ordeal. The singer recently sat down with Entertainment Tonight to explain more about the situation and how she was able to recover from the trauma.
Scroll down to read Linsey’s thoughts about the situation!
[H/T Entertainment Tonight]
31-year-old Linsey revealed to Entertainment Tonight, “I woke up and I felt, like, stinging on my face, and I looked over, and I was holding a spider in my hand.” She added, “I think it probably bit me and I felt the sting, and I just instinctively grabbed it before I woke up. So, I woke up with a spider in my hand. I was like, ‘OK, this isn’t good.’ I felt the stinging immediately. I knew it was bad.”
She immediately rushed to urgent care and consulted a dermatologist. The symptoms progressively got worse, and Linsey even feared she might die.
“When I started having muscle spasms and my throat felt like it was going to close — I actually had a red spot that developed [on my throat] seven days after I was bit,” she remembers. “For nine days, it was a different symptom every day and it got increasingly worse. It gets really bad and then it gets better, so I was like, I feel like six or seven days later I should be getting better, and instead, I was waking up and my throat’s almost closed, and I have a red spot on my throat. That part was scary. The muscle spasms were scary to me because it was up in my shoulder blades. I’m like, ‘Am I having a heart attack?’ The way my body was reacting to the venom, that was the scariest part.”
Linsey detailed, “The nerve pain actually was the worst part for me, because it was so … I thought I knew what pain was, and then this happened.” She added, “I mean, I was in a ball, crying. It was terrible pain. I think just having all the nerves in your face inflamed from the venom was probably the worst part.”
The singer is not only lucky to have survived the potentially fatal encounter, but she says her voice hasn’t been impacted too severely.
“The venom didn’t affect my singing at all, which is awesome, which actually, my wound care doctor was a bit worried about that,” Linsey confessed. “She asked me every day, like, ‘How is your voice? Can you sing? Are you OK?’ because I had things going on with my throat. So, luckily, it has been OK.”
“When the venom sits underneath the skin, [it] just causes necrosis, so it kills all the skin cells,” she explained of the injury. “So, it started seeping in and then it just got black. It was like a hole when the black started to come out.”
The singer claims that a combination of working with a home care specialist and regular hyperbaric oxygen treatments aided the recovery process. However, it’s still unclear how permanent the effects of the injury will be.
“I have some things that have popped up,” she confesses. “I seem to be more allergic to things now, which is interesting, which I’d heard that could be an effect of this. I’ve had some random breakouts, rashes, and I’m like, ‘What’s that from?’”
Having shed 30 pounds prior to receiving the bite is something that Linsey claims helped her recovery, as her body was in its best shape. Her positive outlook and optimistic attitude also helped keep things in check.
“I am pretty OK, you know,” she explained. “Obviously, it’s not the most ideal thing to happen, to have this happen to your face, but I am kind of at the point where I have just accepted it, and I do believe everything happens for a reason.”
She continued, “I do think my faith played a big part in the healing process because I really woke up every day and just believed, like, it was going to be OK. I knew it was going to be OK.”
“It’s been really cool because…when you’re vulnerable, you have the ability to grow,” she considers. “For me, I feel like I’ve grown as a human, as an artist, and it’s allowed me to really connect with people and my fans. I’ve had so many people reach out to me. I feel like I’m really relating to people on a different level now, which is a really cool thing.”
