A mum from Wales was left with no feeling in her leg after a venomous spider bit her.
Delyth Hughes felt nauseous and dizzy following the spider bite and began to lose sensation in her left leg.
The 29-year-old believes she was bitten as she sat alongside her dad in his tractor at the family farm in Caerwys, Flintshire.
READ MORE: Dad runs off with Ukrainian refugee 10 days after she arrived to family home
She recalls a “sensation” of something crawling on her leg but didn’t see the culprit, nor feel the sting of a bite..
In the following days, her leg went numb and she experienced pins and needles reports the Express.
The site of the bite then became bruised and swollen, and it began to fill with pus, prompting concern from friends and family.
She said: "My leg was getting really painful,” she said. “It was throbbing badly and I began feeling nauseous. I had a terrible headache and I was suffering from dizzy spells.”
Examining her leg, she found two tiny puncture wounds adjacent to each other. The area was already bruised and over the coming days, the colour deepened as the puncture site continued to swell.
On advice from friends, she began bathing her leg in an attempt to gain relief. It didn’t work. “My leg was still numb with a kind of pins-and-needles feeling,” said the single mum.
Five days after the bite, Delyth secured an appointment at Holywell Community Hospital.
The wound was lanced and drained of pus and she was prescribed antibiotic tablets. “The staff told me I was lucky I had come in when I did as the poison was still in my blood,” she said.
“I was told to leave it for a couple of days and, if it didn’t improve, I would need to go on IV antibiotics.”
Sign up for Edinburgh Live newsletters for more headlines straight to your inbox
It is thought the pus may have resulted from secondary infection following the bite. As Delyth was to discover, she wasn’t the only victim.
“The hospital staff told me they’d seen a few people recently with the same symptoms. They suspected they were all caused by spider bites - probably from a false widow.”
False widow spiders are the UK’s most venomous spider. They can give a nasty bite but usually, they are no worse than a wasp sting. However, some people appear to suffer post-bite infections and recovery can take a while.
According to experts, symptoms can include pain, swelling, nausea, tremors and altered blood pressure.
