What one Indiana man thought was a simple bug bite ended up sending him to the emergency room with serious complications.
Jerry Wagoner was doing landscaping at his home when he encountered spider webs. What Wagoner didn’t realize was those spider webs would end up being a problem. The Walkerton resident was bitten by spiders while working on the landscaping though at first, he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
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“When I got bit, I did not feel it, or know it, see it or nothing,” he said. “the next day I noticed a couple little white bumps on my arms.”
ABC 57 reports that a few hours later, while driving to visit family in Wisconsin, those little bumps had become swollen, red and extremely painful to the point that Wagoner felt like his body was being “destroyed.”
“He thought he was going to die, he just wanted to lay in bed and die and I’m like no, get up, get dressed and go to the emergency room,” Wagoner’s fiancée Cindy Henehan said.
Wagoner was treated for an insect bite at the hospital but his condition quickly worsened. After suffering from a fever, staph infection and MRSA a second opinion from Wagoner’s regular doctor revealed the real culprit — a brown recluse spider bite.
Jeffrey Burbrink with Extension Education at Purdue explained that the venom from a brown recluse spider bite can cause serious damage if a person is allergic to it.
“Their venom, if they’re highly allergic to it, can cause damage that looks a lot like a person with an ice cream cone dipper with the flesh etched out,” Burbrink said.
Brown recluse spiders are common in southern states, but can be found further north. Approximately the size of a quarter they aren’t aggressive, but will bite if they feel threatened. Burbrink suggested using caution with dark corners of homes or crawlspaces as that is where the spiders like to hide.
“Just go in with caution, be aware there could be something back there in that part of the closet,” he said.
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