Black Widow Spiders

["Visions of the Wind" <wind@visionsofthewind.com>]

Don't ever say "That won't happen to me..."

We used to live in Tucson AZ where there are black widow spiders EVERYWHERE!
And scorpions, and tarantulas, and rattlesnakes, and other nasties, but we
never had any problems. No bites, no stings, no mishaps. Then we moved to
the Rockies, west of Denver, in Golden Colorado at 8400 feet. No problems up
here... right? WRONG! We've been up here since last August, and never
thought about something like this. Mountain lions and bears, yes, but not
spiders.

Yesterday, my daughter Katlyn went out in the morning to clean the horses'
pen with my husband. She put on her hiking boots like she always does when
working with the horses. She was out working for about an hour when she
exclaimed "Ow!" and my husband asked her what was wrong. She said that she
thought she had a splinter in her shoe, and she pulled her shoe off to look.
She didn't see a splinter in her toe, so she shook out her shoe, put it back
on, and finished cleaning the pen. Half an hour later she came in with
slight abdominal cramps. She went into the bathroom, but when she came out
she started cramping worse. Then she said that her lower back hurt too.

My first thought was that puberty was hitting (she's 12), but she seemed to
be in an awful lot of pain... I called the doctor who said to come down
right away. It took us ½ hour to get there, and by then Katlyn was in
serious pain. The doctor thought it might be kidney stones and had me rush
her to the hospital. Once we were in the ER, they pulled blood and did some
urine tests. In the meantime, poor Katlyn was in excruciating pain! He gut
had stopped hurting, but her lower back and her legs were cramping up
horribly! :-( I called my husband at work to tell him that we were at the
hospital. We didn't know what the problem was, and the doctors were
puzzled... My husband says "this may be nothing, but she had either a
splinter or a bite this morning..."

BINGO! The doctors contacted poison control, who said that Katlyn's symptoms
were classic for black widow spider bites. They rushed over a bag of
anti-venom and within 10 minutes, my daughter was resting comfortably. <big
sigh of relief> She was released from the hospital this morning after
undergoing a few more tests to make sure that her kidneys were not damaged.
She should be 100% in another day or so.

The point here is - EVEN THE DOCTORS DID NOT KNOW THE SYMPTOMS OF BLACK
WIDOW POISONING! They are as follows:

1. Bite
2. about ½ hour you start feeling crampy - almost like gas
3. lower back ache - almost like PMS here
4. within 1 hour, the pain gets pretty bad and you starting having some
serious cramps
5. by 2 hours, you are trembling violently and uncontrollably. Gut cramps
have passed, but gut is very rigid, and muscular cramps get very bad. In
Katlyn's case, it was leg and back cramps since she was bitten on the foot.
6. rapid dehydration
7. cold sweats - no fever, but very elevated white blood cell counts -
almost looks like an infection!
8. slightly elevated blood pressure - extremely elevated heart rate (Katlyn
went from a normal heart rate of about 70-80 to 140)
9. pain meds were only slightly helpful
10. anti-venom administered (after a series of allergy tests) and within
10-15 minutes, the cramping stops!

We are hoping that maybe someone might be helped by what we went through
here. I'm not trying to frighten anyone - just help them to be aware! :-)

Stephanie McCray
Golden, CO



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