A man from the UK was left hospitalised after a suspected bite from a flesh-eating spider which is 'rapidly spreading' across Britain.
While a spider bite seems like great fun in the movies, especially if it means being able to shoot webs and climb buildings, Chris Keegan discovered that the reality is far less pleasant.
The 40-year-old from Coventry woke up with a seemingly innocuous bite on his right hand but it soon swelled in size and left him needing surgery.
Just a few hours after he first noticed the spider bite, he was being operated on in hospital, before eventually leaving after several surgeries with six stitches and a significant scar.
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He said: "It was the size of a pinhead - it looked like the head of a pin near the joint.
"It was just a little insect bite on the back of my hand. I decided to go to a pharmacist when it went red.
"They said it was a spider bite, very rare at this time of year but they gave me antibiotics."
However, he took himself to the hospital after the antibiotics failed to do anything, with the bite growing in size and even turning purple.
He added: "Just a day later my whole hand swelled up like a boxing glove.
"The bite itself was purple, swollen and almost ruptured.
"It was very painful - my whole hand was red, swollen, and warm.
"Whatever the infection was seemed to be antibiotic resistant. My hand was containing the infection.
"I took myself to hospital and within five hours I was x-rayed and had my hand on an operating table, and they were cutting out large chunks of puss and skin.
"I was awake through all of the surgeries. I felt weirdly removed because they numb the nerve clusters in your armpit - they were going quite deep into the hand to make sure there was no necrotising soft tissue."
Fortunately, the surgeries did the trick and Chris was soon on the road to recovery, but others could be in for the same unfortunate fate as the likely culprit, the false widow spider, is currently 'rapidly spreading its legs' across the UK, according to BBC Countryfile.
In Chris' case, he is just thankful for the quick work of medical staff as he was able to leave the hospital relatively unharmed, when the spider bite could have easily had far worse circumstances if he wasn't seen so soon.
He concluded: "Something so tiny and trivial if ignored could have led to my thumb or hand being removed, or sepsis could have set in.
"They don't know if the bite was the infection or if the bite was the catalyst for the infection to take hold.
"Some people are hypothesising that it could have been a false widow spider but in reality, we don't know."
Topics: UK News
James Moorhouse