A terrified woman is too afraid to go upstairs in her house after a bite from a false widow spider left her in intensive care for five days.
Alison Blackburn, 49, was bitten on her left foot by Britain’s most venomous spider as she slept and woke at 4am with a sharp pain in her stomach.
Within three hours her leg and foot had ballooned and she was unable to put a shoe on.
By the evening she had a raging fever and began to hallucinate and her partner Gary Pelatt, 50, called an ambulance.
Alison was rushed to Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent where she was immediately admitted to intensive care and fed antibiotics through a drip.
She spent five days in intensive care and had an operation to drain the poison from her foot to reduce the swelling.
After her operation the mother-of-one was told it was likely to be a false widow spider that had bitten her.
Since returning home Alison has fumigated her house and washed all her clothing and bedding in an attempt to get rid of the spider.
But 10 days after the bite she says she is still too terrified to go upstairs in her home in Strood, Kent.
She said: “I’m still in shock and that spider is still around somewhere.
“Since coming out of hospital I’m terrified to even be in my own home.
“I can’t go upstairs, I sleep on the sofa and I’m having to talk to someone about it because I’m petrified all the time.
“I can’t leave the house in the day because of my leg, but I can’t face being in the house either.”
Alison, who is still recovering from the bite, added: “I was hallucinating things. I thought there was water running down all of the walls.
“I was burning up and shaking and my heart murmur, which usually can’t be heard, was noticed straight away by the paramedics.
“I felt so sick. I had pins and needles in my leg, it was throbbing. I was slurring my words. I had to have an operation to get rid of all the poison in my foot.
“It’s been traumatic. People need to know how dangerous these spiders are – they can be lethal.”
