Woman loses 10 lbs of skin to spider bite
This post was published 2 years 11 months 8 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Damn you Hobo spiders! MSNBC reports of a woman losing 10 lbs of skin to a spider bite. Oh the horror. This only reaffirms my fear of spiders and tendency to squash any that come into view.
A small spider bite turned out to be a big problem for Cindy Pettey. Pettey awoke when she was bitten on the stomach in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, but thought little else of it. Then she started running a fever, she felt achy and weak. The bite sore became larger. Next thing Pettey knew, a doctor was telling her he believed she’d been bitten by a dangerous hobo spider. Pettey had surgery that removed 10 pounds of skin and flesh, leaving her with an abdomen covered in stitches.
Reminds me of a few mornings back when I woke up only to turn my head and see this ugly hairy spider crawling up my bedroom wall. Out of curiosity, how many other readers share a similar disgust of spiders?
I hate spiders. I can’t stand them. Here in Australia we have Huntsmen (I dont know if they exist anywhere else in the world, but they do here). They are relatively harmless, a bit will only cause swelling and pain, nothing lethal about them. But, they are big (a little smaller than my hand, usually) they are hairy, they run fast, and they’re in my house. My dad doesnt like us killing them, becuase they are harmless, but, there’s something about the thought of a spider walking across my face while I’m asleep that really doesnt do it for me.
count me in on the ‘kill them all’ side.
and i guess you can add another vote, on behalf of my girlfriend, she feels the same way…
The mere thought of spiders wrenches my stomach into a ball of knots. I detest there appearance, the way they move, the way they eat, the way they live. I cannot stand one being in my room or near my house. I am so scared of them that I will freeze into place and not go to school if one is poised around my bedroom door because there is a possibility that it might jump on me…ugh (shudders).
Same here. I lived in a daylight basement apartment before I met my girlfriend and there were quite a few small, brown spiders. I didn’t think much of them and killed any I saw, cleaning up the place. I even sprayed some home defense stuff (by Ortho – great product). I’d never been super afraid of spiders, but after my gf started spending more time at my place and freaking out every time she saw one and, eventually I started getting a fear of them, too.
For good reason… we live in Oregon and she was convinced those spiders I was dealing with were hobos. Turns out I’m 99% sure, too. They had funnel webs, looked *exactly* like the picture on the news when this story came out, and were aggressive as hell. I even knocked one off the wall of my bedroom once and it landed on the bed and came after me instead of running away. That scared the crap out of me. I also started knocking our shoes in the mornings to make sure there weren’t any there and, not even expecting it, one day a spider fell out on my knee (don’t ask why I was knocking a shoe on my knee instead of the floor), which ran down my leg and and toward the bathroom. We think they were coming inside because there was construction next door. My apartment being partially submerged in the hillside didn’t help matters, I’m sure.
Needless to say, we moved in together in an apartment far away (but still in Oregon). We’ve seen maybe three spiders since we’ve been here and none of them look like that (a couple long legged ones and some tiny black ones).
I really hate spiders that can do stuff like this story shows. And they’re so small and “normal” looking that we don’t take chances, either. Never will.
I have absolutely no problem with snakes or rats (I’ve had a few) or any other types of insects, but spiders make my skin crawl. I don’t consider myself macho or anything, but not a whole lot of things bother me besides spiders. They literally make me itchy when I encounter one. Finding a wolf spider in the shower in the morning is almost enough to make me forgo a shower altogether. In fact, I got the shivers just now, recalling the last wolf spider in the shower incident while I’m typing this.
Spiders are cute :)
The things people do to lose weight…will the madness ever stop!!
I don’t have a problem with spiders as long as they stay outside of my house. As soon as they come inside, though…
Once when I was sitting on the edge of my bed, just getting ready to go bed, I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and saw a spider (looked like a hobo, but I’m not sure if it was) =crawling on my pillow=! I didn’t want to scare my wife (who was laying down on the bed, right next to the spider), so I calmly reached over and grabbed the corner of the pillow, then threw it across the room as fast as I could. I then hunted down the spider and killed it.
My wife is a med tech at a local hospital and she says that doctors (around here, at least) are really bad at correctly diagnosing spider bites. It’s actually kind of a joke around the lab. She says that they get samples sent up to them with “spider bite” written on them, but more often than not, they aren’t really spider bites.
I know 3 people here in WA that have been bitten by them. One in Eastern Wa and two here near Seattle. It’s nasty stuff, couple of them have bad scars.
I HATE spiders.