[pct-l] spider bites.

[Georgi Heitman]

According to my info, there is a CA Recluse, tho people may be right about
no Brown Recluses in CA.  Also, according to my info, a recluse bite injects
an enzyme into it's victim's system that destroys the bitee's flesh from the
bite site out.  The best procedure medics have come up with seems to be
heavy doses of antibiotics coupled with, as necessary, removal of all
infected flesh as a method of getting out past any skin that has been
reached by the slowly spreading enzyme.  At least this was the procedure in
place when one of my Girl Scout volunteer's husband got bit on the calf of
one leg about 20 years ago.  He spent days and days in hospital as they
removed, a bit at a time, trying not to be overly aggressive because there
are so many muscles, ligaments, etc, in the leg calf, a large portion of the
man's lower leg.  Once the infection was stopped, Sue's husband needed
reconstructive surgery to replace what had required removal to stop the
spread of the infection.  That reconstruction was still underway when I
retired and moved here.  I never heard the final outcome, I assume he made a
good recovery.
FW received a spider bite while sleeping one January after we moved up here
from the BA.  After nearly a week of our internist opening, cleaning and
scraping the bite area, he spent two nights in hospital in order to save his
finger.  The infection wrecked his knuckle even then....it's provides an
interesting 'hook' to that index finger.  The doctor sez he can replace the
knuckle, but that meanwhile FW had a good nose-picking tool there.  We could
see clearly the two tiny puncture wounds where the critter bit him.  We
assumed a Brown Recluse and read that they hang out in the same areas as
Black Widows, which we've seen in dark places here.  Only more recently have
we heard that it might have been a CA Recluse instead.
 I suspect that there's not that much difference in the treatment between a
recluse spider bite and a staph infection...w/o treatment, the results of
either can turn deadly.
 Staph, by the way is on everyones body. (Ladies, remember the horrid zits
we used to get on our backs from wearing wool sweaters during cold northern
state winters?  The ones we used tons of make-up on to disguise when we went
to those 'formal' winter balls in lovely long dresses?  Staph infections,
all.  A less dangerous pest back in the 40's, 50's, etc, before the advent
of antibiotic-resistant infections such as that.
 Now, MRSA infections are quite commonplace, because, at least in part,
antibiotics were pretty new to the medical scene back then and we weren't
really aware of an infection's ability to mutate and grow strong enough to
ward off a medicine that could kill it's intrusion into the body.  Folks
taking antibiotics in those early days are partially to blame for that as we
tended back then to NOT completely use all of the medications we were given,
thus only weakening the infection enough to make the zit or whatever to go
away temporarily, but not to kill it outright.  Hence it's ability to simmer
quietly in our systems overcoming the antibiotic it had met by building
antibodies if its own thus growing strong enough to become more and more
resistant to that med the next time the staph chose to rear its ugly head.
I think it remains a mystery as to when the staph on our bodies makes a
decision to become a problem.  Most small wounds. whether bites, cuts,
scratches, whatever, may be irritating, and even get infected to a point,
but never develop into a full-blown get-help-right-away staph infection that
could be life-threatening.  It pays to be vigilant!...and clean!
Safe and Happy Trails to us all........
FireFly