Driving down a mountain road in South Africa, I felt something crawling in my crutch. I went to scratch it and the beast stabbed my balls. The pain was excruciating, we pulled over onto the hard shoulder and when I dropped my trousers, there it was, a black button spider with a patch of red on its back. In anger, I squashed it and threw it into the bushes.
I couldn’t drive the car as I was in that much pain, so my wife took over for the rest of the drive. When we got back to the farm, it was dark and late, I took a handful of Piriton tablets which knocked me out.
The following morning I went to the Doctors and he suggested I come and see him every 2-3 days for a review in case one of the balls dropped out (the poison was necrotic), then it is plastic surgery. From his computer screen and from my description, we were able to identify the spider and the recommended treatment.
I was put on 2 different types of antibiotics and strong pain killers, there was no antivenin. When the balls turned blue/black and swelled up to the size of a football, the GP said he would have to lance them and drain off the fluid.
It was nearly 3 months before the pain disappeared. All that from a spider bite.
When I wrote it up on another forum, I had cheap smart Alec comments: did I apply a tourniquet, did my wife not suck out the poison?.....having a sense of humour is must
