The brave woman, Sheri, was hospitalized for nearly a week after a 10-hour kayaking trip led to a serious swelling on her lips. The woman told local news outlets that just 1 day after the kayaking trip, she recognized a suspicious swelling on her lip. At first, doctors struggled to treat it. Now, the womansays she’s just glad she lived to warn others about what’s out there.
“I cried, it was terrible, I thought I was going to die, you know, it was a lot of pain,” said Sheri. She realized that something bit her and, two days later, found that it was a brown recluse. During an interview, the woman also said that she never imagined that a spider would cause her life to flash before her eyes. But, Sheri experienced just that when she was bitten by the venomous arachnid on the lip and faced hallucinations as well as hospitalization in order to cope with its harmful effects. The venom caused her lips to swell up considerably more than their normal size!
First, the woman went to the Emergency Center and was given antibiotics. At this point, she wasn’t too worried about the bite. However, it got worse and so did her fear for how dangerous it could be. “I’m almost 50 and I’ve been floating in the river since I could swim, six years old,” she said. “I was just praying I wasn’t going to die because I hear horror stories and you look on the internet and see all this stuff.” Doctors told the woman it was a bite from a brown recluse spider. The local hospital was full at the time, so she was sent to another hospital.
She says she’s thankful for the doctors and nurses there who worked to help her. “I hallucinated a lot and thought it was because of the pain meds they gave me, but I heard from several different people that that’s what the spider venom does,” said Sheri. Her hallucinations came and went for the first five days of her hospitalization. “I just thought I was at my mom’s house or my sister’s house and then I’d get out and go look out the hospital room and realized I was in the hospital,” she explained. Eventually, the swelling went down and, even though she’s still on antibiotics, she’ll be okay, the doctors explained.
