Day Three: 6/8/11

I can feel the poison working it's way into the muscle. I find myself breathing through the shooting pains and the tightness that comes with the muscle cramps in my hamstring. Focusing on my breath in and out. Because I know that just like a labor pain, it will pass.

The wound has easily doubled in diameter and today I can see darkening spots that just look like bruising. What I know is that the insides of my leg are slowly being liquefied or digested and it scares the heck out of me. This venom that the BRS injects is the same hemotoxic enzyme that you would find with the bite of an eastern diamondback rattlesnake or a pit viper. Yikes!! I'd rather be bitten by none of the above, but I guess that I lucked out by only getting such a small amount from the little spider.

Okay, so pictures...here is my leg on the afternoon of June 8, 2011. It is red, inflamed, and rather painful. It feels very hot, but then I get cold sensations through it, like it's wet, but when I reach to touch it, the skin is intact and completely dry. The dark spots are of great concern to me.



Treatments? I have been taking the antibiotic prescribed to me, I have been taking my probiotics twice a day as well, I am drinking aloe vera juice (gag!), and a friend of mine suggested that I use lavender oil on the bite. I did some more reading on this and there is documentation that supports lavender oil preventing gangrene. Thank you Kelli. That's not to say that the other stuff isn't working, but to see the red, angry, inflamed swelling gone and to only have some mild redness with the one little dark spot is giving me great hope.



Here is a picture of the oil...