University student Kandace Simmons recounts her four-month battle with a brown recluse bite

As University student Kandace Simmons got ready for work, she felt the sensation of a bee sting on her leg after she put her pants on straight out of the laundry basket.

“I felt the spider bite me. It looked like an ant bite – a little blister came up immediately,” Simmons said.

She said she smashed the tiny inhabitant of her jeans the moment she felt it bite and never saw what it looked like.

It would later be determined as the bite of a brown recluse spider.

Don W. Killebrew, chairman of the University’s biology department, is a well-known spider enthusiast. He said brown recluse spider bites are rare. Even more rare are those that cause a severe wound. He also said people often misidentify brown recluse spiders.

“If you don’t have the spider where someone can look at it then you don’t know for sure what it is,” Killebrew said.

Simmons said she finally went to East Texas Medical Center in Athens later that evening with back pains and difficulty breathing, after she found online her symptoms corresponded to those of severe spider bites.

Since the culprit of her bite was long gone, the doctor initially diagnosed it as a scorpion bite.

“By the time I got to the hospital, it had spread [bigger than a softball] and it was black and blue and it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” Simmons said.

It’s been about four months since the bite, and it’s still a three-inch crater on her leg. Simmons said she has to pack and wrap it every day with gauze. Her doctor tells her it will be about another month before the skin starts to grow again.

However, Simmons’ experience is unlike most others bitten by the venomous spider.

“It’s estimated that 90 percent of brown recluse bites don’t cause a significant problem. Most heal nicely without medical intervention within a few weeks,” Killebrew said.

Dr. Killebrew said the toxin of the brown recluse spider affects the skin cells.

It causes the body to react in such a way that it causes destruction of the tissue at the site of the bite, unlike the “neurotoxin” bite of a black widow spider that acts on the entire nervous system. It’s more common to see severe complications with bites that get infected by bacteria.

“There are many other brown spiders in the same family as the brown recluse that are very closely related,” he said. “But they are not as toxic.”

Dr. Killebrew said the brown recluse, like most spiders, eats smaller insects. A spider’s poison is a matter of survival, and is intended for prey.

“Usually, they bite out of nature,” he said.

Brown recluse spiders are most commonly found in the south central region of the U.S. and tend to retreat behind or under large objects.

As the name suggests, “They’re very secretive – they’re not out and about,” Killebrew said.

As an example, he suggested that a brown recluse might be found in a blanket stored for summer.

Brown recluse spiders often are called the “fiddle-back spider,” due to a seemingly distinctive violin-shaped marking on the cephalothorax, or body of the spider.

But Dr. Killebrew said it really requires the eye of an expert to positively identify a brown recluse. Some are cream-colored to gray, and some are tan, though most generally look brown from a distance. The “fiddle-back” can help identify a brown recluse, but a lack of the fiddle design does not remove the possibility.