A young boy has was left with a huge decaying hole in his life - after being bitten by a spider.
Bobby Cleary, nine, from Canvey, Essex, was initially told by his GP that the swelling on his life shin, just above his sock line, was from a gnat bite.
But within days a hole had developed in his leg as the poison from the bite ate away his flesh.
He was left with an inch deep hole in his shin which was so bad that it made his grandmother Amanda "pull back and gag".
Bobby's mum Emma, 34, said: "I panicked, I never seen anything like it."
The schoolboy was bitten on Monday, April 1st, by what his mum thought was a bite from a small insect like a gnat.
Emma, a primary school teacher said: "But on Thursday morning, it was itchy and becoming swollen.
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"I put some Savlon on it and didn't think much more of it."
As a baby, Bobby had the bacterial skin infection Celluitis in his eye meaning he's more susceptible to serious infections like Sepsis .
It wasn't until Thursday afternoon while Bobby was at an after school club that the spider bite became serious.
Emma said his teachers "phoned up and told me that he was limping and they saw that the wound was weeping, they dressed it and we got an emergency appointment at the GP."
The local GP confirmed it was a bite, but told them not to worry as she thought it wasn't infected.
They gave him antihistamine and pain relief and bandaged his leg.
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While Bobby was staying with his nan the day after, Emma got a call saying that the dressing was filling with a lot of fluid so they immediately went to A&E.
“They dressed it again and gave him antibiotics so I felt better about it and thought that would be that," she said.
"Thank goodness they knew what they were doing."
But at the end of the weekend, Bobby's nan removed the dressing on Bobby's legs and "gagged" at the sight of the hole.
"It was clear it wasn't a gnat bite."
The family went to A&E again and Bobby was put onto an IV drip to flush out the spider poison.
Emma will now have to keep an eye on her son for the next few months to make sure the bite does not become infected, which could put him at risk of sepsis.
She has described her son as being "amazing" and "dealing with the entire thing in his stride".
