Spider Bite

Several of you asked about Abby’s spider bite, so I thought I would give you more information.

Several weeks ago Abby woke up around 11 at night crying that her leggie hurt. The good mom that I am, I shooshed her back to bed. Well, this happened for about 30 minutes. Finally, she went back to sleep.

When she woke up that morning, she was crying that she couldn’t walk and crawled into our room. Brian said he thought her leg had probably fallen asleep. I was like, but what about her crying in the night. Well, he didn’t hear any of that – of course! I was holding Abby feeling her leg and felt a knot on the back of her thigh. I lifted her up for Brian to see and he said it looked like a bug bite.

A bite. What do you do? GOOGLE of course ... and call my mom! The articles we read said not to panic – if it is a spider bite, it is okay for most bites and just watch it. I then got the thermometer out to take the temperature of her bite. It was actually about 5 degrees warmer than the rest of her skin. So, I decided to be the paranoid mom and take her to the doctor.

When we got to the doctor, Abby was walking but with a limp. I kept looking at the bite and it didn’t seem to be any worse, so I started feeling silly for taking her to the doctor. The doctor looked at the bite and felt it. He didn’t seem to like the knot or the heat from her bite. He then got out the ‘looker’ (you know – the thing they use to look in your ears and mouth) and he said ‘oh – she definitely has a spider bite'. I asked if we would be doing anything about it and he said most definitely. Abby took an antibiotic for the infection and a steroid for the venom. She did great on both of the meds and didn’t have any side effects.

We don’t have any idea what kind of spider it was because we couldn’t find it. But, we think it was probably a brown recluse due to the symptoms.

There you have it – the adventures of a spider bite at the Andrews house!