False widow spider bite leaves man's eye oozing green gunk and face throbbing
The venom of a common British garden spider left a teacher in agony and fearing he was having a stroke after he was bitten on his eyelid. Stuart Vesty, 50, woke up in the middle of the night with his face throbbing painfully from the spider bite.
By the morning his face was sagging like a stroke victim and there was the squashed corpse of a spider in his bed. He rushed to hospital with the spider in a box, believing the creepy-crawly was the fanged culprit.
At hospital, NHS doctors confirmed the dad-of-two had a severe reaction to a bite from a spider. On examining the mangled body of the creature, a doctor confirmed that it was a false widow spider, whose venom causes human cells to rot away.
Fearing the bite had perforated Stuart's eyeball and could threaten his eyesight, doctors poured a dye into his eye to determine where the spider bit him, leaving a glowing green residue around his eye. Hours later, Stuart's eye began to ooze a bright green liquid that he joked made it look eerily similar to the bionic eye of Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg character from the 1984 hit film The Terminator.
Stuart, a health and social care trainer from Sandwich, in Kent, said: "I was getting ready to go to bed and I'd forgotten something in the outside office and went to go and get that. We'd put up a gazebo that day in the garden and I'm not sure if that's where the spider was but I banged my head on the gazebo on the way back in because it was dark.
Cherished girl, 3, who spent half her life in hospital dies before surgery
A false widow spider bit Stuart Vesty on his eyelid, causing him excruciating pain and causing his face to sag like a stroke victim (Kennedy News and Media)"I got into bed and later in the night woke up with a really bad pain and throbbing down one side of my face. I got up in the night, took some antihistamines and went back to sleep.
"When I got up in the morning, it looked like I had had a stroke. One side of my face was sagging, my wife was really quite worried.
"We got ready to go to hospital and as we were getting ready, I noticed a spider actually in the bed that had been squashed. I put it together that this was a spider bite and thought 'it's dead and I'll put it in something and take it to the hospital, they might be able to identify it'.
"We took it down to the hospital in Margate and it was quite funny as [staff] were terrified, they didn't want me to bring out the spider. I eventually saw a really great doctor and he said 'I don't suppose you caught the spider?' and I said 'yes', showed it to him and he confirmed it was a false widow spider."
After running a gauntlet of tests on Stuart, at the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent, including pouring the dye into his eye, they concluded his eyeball hadn't been punctured and that he'd been bitten on his eyelid instead.
Stuart Vesty, from Kent, had a severe reaction when a false widow spider bit him on the eyelid (Kennedy News and Media)Stuart, whose dramatic story unfolded on August 16, said: "I didn't really know anything about false widow spiders other than it's the most venomous spider here. He put this stuff in my eye. I couldn't exactly see where the bite was so his concern was that it was on the actual eyeball.
"He had to put in dye whilst doing an examination to check the eyeball wasn't perforated and luckily it wasn't. It was actually in the eyelid but quite close to the eyeball. I was relieved to find it hadn't perforated my eyeball, I didn't have too much of a look at it.
"But when I finally looked at it, it did look really bad. It was green, my face was really swollen so I was quite worried and very relieved when it came back to normal.
"When I was very little I had a stick thrown that went into that eye. I was a very young person to receive an artificial lens implant. I don't have great vision in that eye anyway so it wouldn't have been good if it was the other eye [that was bitten].
"There is a slight colour difference between the two eyes so my wife always jokes that that's my Terminator eye, I certainly looked like it when it turned green. When I saw what it looked like, I was just jokingly thinking 'if I lose this eye, I want a full Arnie Terminator eye'."
Doctor warns about using bath bombs and debunks intimate health myth in shower
The dead body of the false widow spider that bit Stuart Vesty (Kennedy News and Media)Feeling lucky not to have lost his sight, Stuart said he has a newfound respect for the seemingly harmless critters that can be found in most UK gardens.
Stuart said: "If it had been the eyeball it would've been much more serious, I feel very lucky. I didn't know much about false widow spiders but when I looked it up I read that there are people out there who have lost a hand, so I really feel lucky it was all okay.
"I'm much more aware of spiders - I certainly have a lot more respect for English spiders."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
