This is different- I was bitten by a Black Widow Spider
 
Last Monday, in my video blog, I was talking about what a tough week I was having fibromyalgia-wise.  I was commenting that this was a bit unusual for me these days, since after four years on the Guai Protocol, I actually have many more good days than bad days.  But, I was in the midst of two incredibly intense pain-filled days that just reminded me of what a rough disease fibromyalgia is.  In particular, I was having severe pains and spasms in my upper back and right shoulder.
 
Well, as the week went on, these symptoms got a bit weirder.  I even started writing them down, because I began to realize, that these were not normal fibromyalgia symptoms.  Here’s what I wrote down:
 
- constant, unrelenting right shoulder pain (can’t find a comfortable position to sleep, even with ice bags, and an extra pillow under my right arm)
 
- pain radiating down my right arm, into the wrist
 
- tingling in my right hand
 
- weird, twitchy muscle spasms in my forearm (when I say weird, I mean alien kind of weird-- muscles jumping up and down like there’s something under the skin)
 
- twitchy muscle thing now going on in my back muscles, too
 
- losing range of motion in my arm, can’t lift it above my head.  Hurts to take off a shirt, or sweatshirt, (anything I have to pull over my head.)
 
- hurts when my son holds my hand, (any kind of pulling down motion)
 
- no appetite, feel like I’m coming down with something, feel a little feverish
 
- can’t multi-task- can’t focus (which IS actually a normal fibromyalgia symptom, but as I said, this is not “normal” for me anymore.  These days, I can function, well, almost as well as a “normal” person.)
 
The final straw for me was when I lost feeling in my thumb.  Tingling in my hands was one thing, but completely losing feeling?  That is definitely not a fibromyalgia symptom.
 
Now, the first thing that came to mind was not: “Well, heck, I guess was I was bitten by a poisonous spider, then...” because, well, such things, as far as I know, are rather rare.
 
I assumed that since my shoulder hurt like a, er, bear, that perhaps that was the source of the trouble.  It didn’t explain all the symptoms, but it certainly hurt more than anything else.  If I could get the shoulder pain to stop, or at least ease up, I could deal with the other stuff.  I had a ton of stuff I had to get done for the school, and it was really hard to concentrate with the distraction of these stupid twitchy spasms and intense shoulder pain.
 
So, all I could think of, was, well, maybe I should call my orthopedist?  I had just seen an orthopedist the week before because I’d injured my knee surfing.  He was a nice fellow, and was also from New York.  He’d worked at Lenox-Hill Hospital, which was where my brother Mike had several of his cancer surgeries.  He knew Dr. Michael Brown, team doctor for the New York Mets, and the doctor who’d done my last two knee surgeries,  (well, three, if you count the screw removal), at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.  It was fun talking to a fellow New Yorker, and we’d chatted for like 25 minutes.  Normally, a doctor talks to you for less than 5 minutes.
 
Granted, I felt a bit foolish going back there a week later with a DIFFERENT injured body part, but, well, I wasn’t sure quite what else to do, and I couldn’t figure out a home remedy for this one.
 
At first, the receptionist couldn’t find me an appointment until like 2 weeks in the future, (and I was thinking, “Uggh!  Two more weeks of this?!”)  but, then she said: “Oh, wait!  We have a cancellation for Friday.  Can you come Friday?”
 
Friday was just two days away.  It was at an awkward time, and it meant finding someone to pick up Alex from school, and then babysit him until either I got home, or Jovani returned home from the airport.  But, hey, if it provided some answers to the alien twitchy muscles, and the intense searing muscle pain in my shoulder, well, then, I was willing to call in all my “Mommy network” favors and make this appointment.
 
Friday finally rolls around, and I double and triple-check with Alex that he knows I’m not picking him up from school.  Being the paranoid Mom I am, I’d typed up notes for both his teachers, and included photos of the people who would be picking him up.  I also provided the same information to the front office.  Yeah, I am one of THOSE kind of parents.
 
My brain is very fuzzy, so I forget to bring my symptom list, and the directions to the office.  Fortunately, I was able to remember the street address of the building, but I did forget to mention a couple of key things to the orthopedist, like the weird twitchy muscle spasms.
 
Well, the orthopedist is concerned about the loss of feeling in my thumb, and says: “I don’t think this is your shoulder at all, I think this is coming from your neck.”
 
So, they take x-rays.  I like this office, because they can do they x-rays right there, saving days of running back and forth from place to place waiting for results.  
 
“Nope, no broken shoulder,” he said, “but, you do have two cervical vertebrae that are impinged upon each other.  Let’s try some physical therapy.”
 
He hands me a slip of paper, and says he wants to see me again in a week.
 
I didn’t want to rain on his parade, because he seemed so pleased with himself for discovering those two cervical vertebrae that were sitting on top of each other.  So, I politely took my slip of paper, carefully shook his hand, and walked out.
 
 
But, I’ve had those wacky cervical vertebrae since I was like 17 years old.  I was on my way to my waitressing job, and I was stopped at a red light.  A car rear-ended me doing like 30 or 40 mph.  
 
In New York, at that time, we had a slang term for drivers like him....we called them “guidos,” (pronounced gwee-dohs.)  
 
It meant a person of Italian heritage who drove an Iroc-Z sports car with two fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror.
 
Nope, I’m not making this up.  You would not believe how many guidos circled around the Jefferson Valley Mall, cruising lap after lap after lap...  everyday after school, it was like Irocs on parade...  
 
So, this Iroc hits me.  The driver gets out, apologizes.  He had been changing a cassette in his cassette deck.  (Hey, at least it wasn’t an 8-track deck.  I’m not THAT old.)
 
I guess even in the era before cell phones and text messages, we still had our share of drivers doing everything BUT paying attention to actually driving.  He writes down a phone number that turns out to be absolutely fake, and drives off.  I was really mad at myself later for not asking to see his driver’s license, but it was my first car accident, so I didn’t know what to do.  
 
And, back in those days, nobody had cell phones except those foot long ones you saw on episodes of “MacGyver” where the drug cartels were using them out in the jungle, right before Mac swiped one, and turned it into the detonator for a homemade bomb or something...
 
I thought both me and my car were fine, except for the fact that my license plate had been scrunched up, (my Dad hammered it back out), and my bumper was scraped, and had an awful lot of Iroc-Z paint on it.  I was consoled by the fact that the Iroc-Z took MUCH more damage than my car.  His low front end slid under my car, and his whole front end got crunched up.  So, he might not have paid for my battered license plate, or the bumper I never repainted, but his Iroc-Z sure didn’t look as pretty with those fuzzy dice anymore...
 
(Yes, I did look for him circling the Jefferson Valley Mall many times, but never found the little bastard.)
 
Ah, but fond guido memories of my youth aside...
 
I did end up with a stiff neck for several days after that being rear-ended by that fine specimen of Chevy engineering.  Years later, a neurosurgeon told me that a simple accident like that was all it took to start two little vertebrae from crunching in on each other.  He told me I should wear one of those ridiculous looking neck collars for sleeping at night, (but, I never could, because it was too uncomfortable to fall asleep in.  I did try several times.  Now, it just sits in my sweater drawer.)  And, he said I’d probably need surgery around age 50 to uncompress those disks.  Yeah, whatever, I’ll deal with that when I’m 50.  Oh, and I was supposed to wear that funny neck thing on long road trips, too, (if I wasn’t the driver), to alleviate neck strain from all that sitting.  Hah!  I tried that once, and I felt so ridicilous-- like that lady in the Brady Bunch episode who was faking whiplash until Mr. Brady was clever enough to throw his briefcase into the certain of the courtroom...
 
That clever Mr. Brady...
 
So, yeah, I knew all about the fact that my neck wasn’t perfect, and yes, that could explain a numb thumb.  But, that would NOT explain intense searing pain in the shoulder that came on with no warning.
 
And, what about the muscle twitching, and all that other weirdness?  No, the cervical thing didn’t make sense.  
 
But, what do I do now?
 
Where do I go from here?
 
I wanted to resolve this, because I really missed riding bikes with Alex, and I missed working out at the gym.  But, there was no way I could ride the bike until I got feeling, and range of motion, back into my arm.
 
Uggggh, this was frustrating...
 
My husband came home from his business trip Friday night, and wanted to know why I kept putting heat packs, and then ice packs on my shoulder.  
 
“How did you injure yourself?” he asked, a bit annoyed.  (He always seems to get mad if I injure something, like I’ve done it on purpose- truly, I don’t.)
 
“I don’t know,” I said, knowing it sounded lame.
 
I wished I had a more plausible explanation than “I don’t know.”
 
I told him what the doctor had said earlier that day, but how I didn’t think the doctor was quite right.
 
“Well, then what?” he asked.
 
“I don’t know,” I said, again, wishing I could answer better.  I could feel he was annoyed, but I didn’t know how to fix it.
 
Ah, but it turned out the answer jumped out at me the very next morning...
 
I was using my one good hand to sort the laundry in the garage.  I was just preparing to throw a load of whites in the dryer, when something large and black moved on one of Alex’s white socks.
 
I picked it up so I could get a better look.
 
It was a black widow spider.
 
And, not just any black widow spider-- a female.
 
The males are much smaller, and don’t have the red violin markings.  The females are the venomous ones, and their venom is actually more potent than that of most venomous snakes.  (Hey, my son is into bugs and reptiles.  Not a week goes by that we aren’t reading some book with either “Bug, Snake, or Lizard” somewhere in the title.)
 
The spider was very calm and content, not moving at all.  
 
Surprising myself, I was calm, too.  I didn’t drop it, or scream.  When we first moved into this house, four years ago, a potato bug (Jerusalem Cricket) once jumped out at me from the laundry.  My husband was away, so I went and got my neighbor to kill it for me.  
 
At one time, I was TERRIBLY bug-phobic.
 
But, now I am the mother of a six-year old boy.  Bugs are a regular part of our daily life.  We have two lizards, and an entire tank full of crickets in order to feed the lizards.  Every once in a while a cricket will escape, and I need to pick the little bugger up by hand, and feed him to either our lizards or goldfish.  (Our goldfish have grown so enormous over the years that they look more like carp than goldfish.  They like the crickets, too, so sometimes I’ll handfeed one to them, and they’ll take it right from my hand.)
 
So, yes, bug-phobia is not much of an option when you’ve got a little boy in the house.
 
I looked around the garage, and spied one of Alex’s critter keeper tanks.  I gently deposited Mrs. Widow inside, and closed the lid.  I finished throwing in the load of wash, then went back into the house to Google “black widow spider bite symptoms.”
 
Well, hallelujah!
 
While there is a wide variety of information on the web about black widow spider bites, and some of it contradicts each other, the general consensus is:
 
- black widows are venomous (OK, well, duh)
 
- they like dark places (they are rarely found in houses, but when they are, it is in dark basements or garages)
 
- symptoms start 20 - 30 minutes after the bite
 
OK, I remember first feeling the searing shoulder pain on Saturday afternoon.  We came home from the gym and I changed my t-shirt.  I later found the spider in the laundry basket.  It is possible he originally had crawled into a freshly folded pile of laundry, attracted by the warmth.  
 
- bites will cause twitchy, muscle spasms (yup, saw those)
 
- bites will cause intense pain (yup, I remember leaving the room and hiding in the bathroom for a little while, so I could curl up in a ball, take deep breaths, and try to work through the pain.  I didn’t want Alex to see me like that, and we were due to have Sunday brunch with some dear friends. There are friends, and then there are friends.  I did not want to cancel, no matter how bad the pain was-- I would make it through.)  I had years of getting through fibromyalgia pain, and migraines.  Whatever this was, I could get through this, too.
 
- Black widows secrete a venomous neurotoxin, (meaning it affects the nervous system), so in almost all victims, the bite produces severe pain in the back and shoulder area. (interesting, I guess it doesn’t matter where you got bit)
 
In my case, though, I suspect I must have been bit on or near my right shoulder since the pain was so localized and intense in this region, and my left arm was largely unaffected.
 
You can experience muscle pain and weakness throughout your body, including your legs.  Well, you see, now, to me, that would be a normal state of being, as that IS a fibromyalgia symptom.  
 
So, nope, I was so side-tracked by the”out-of-the-norm” symptoms I had going on, I didn’t pay the least bit of attention to whether I was having any leg pain or anything.  That would have been just a perfectly normal week for me.  I’ve had leg pain my entire life, since I was born with fibromyalgia, just as Alex was.
 
Ah, now this symptom really caught my eye- “slurred speech and cognitive difficulties.”
 
OK, cognitive difficulties are a fibro thing, but slurred speech is NOT.
 
On Wednesday afternoon, another dear friend, whom I used to go to church with, called to say hello.  We chatted for a while about how our kids were doing, life in general, and then she asked how I was doing overall.  I confessed to her I was having a rough week.
 
“Well, we’re just having hamburgers and beans for dinner, but it would be so easy for me to put on another two burgers.  Why don’t you and Alex join us for dinner?” she offered.
 
That sounded heavenly.  Ever since this intense pain had set in, I’d been making very simple dinners for Alex, like tomato soup from Trader Joe’s, and some fresh fruit, and a glass of almond milk.  Or, the past two nights, we’d just had eggs, and some fruit.  I had no energy to turn on the BBQ grill and actually fire up some meat or anything.
 
Alex has never been a picky eater, and pretty much eats whatever you set in front of him without complaint, but, I figured he’d love hamburger and beans a lot more than another night of eggs and fruit.
 
Well, the oddest thing happened during that dinner.  I was glad to see these friends again, as truth be told, I haven’t been to church in a while.  But, for some reason, I could not form sentences coherently.  I kept having to stop, and restart my sentences.  
 
“Oh, dear,” I thought, as I was driving home, “they’re going to think I’m doing some serious drugs.”
 
I felt like an idiot for not being able to get a coherent sentence out.
 
Something else had been bothering me all week about my cognitive abilities.
 
I had an article that needed writing for our local small town newspaper.  Normally, I could whip out an article like that in a day, or just a few hours.  My entire 15 year career was spent doing writing work for different corporations-- I felt like it was the one marketable skill I could always fall back upon.  There will always be a need for writers to help executives, corporations, working professionals, etc., get their messages across coherently.
 
But, it took me four days to finish this article.  
 
Four days!  Granted, I had a backlog of other stuff that needed to get done, but I should have been able to do that work, plus the article, with no problems at all.  This was what I do-- I write.
 
What the heck was wrong with me?!
 
I even went so far as checking the date on one of my fibromyalgia medications.  Its a medication I’ve been on for a couple of years now to help counteract some of my fibromyalgia symptoms-- it is also used for adult ADD.  (This is a med I take in addition to guai.)  I noticed that once I started on it, not only did my fibro symptoms improve, but I stopped getting side-tracked so easily, (a trait, unfortunately, that I see in my son.)  My husband was so pleased once I started projects and actually completely finished them before starting something else.  He actually said: “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”
 
This past week, I felt like the old Diana.  The one who had a lot of energy, and could do very good work when focused, but could be so easily side-tracked...
 
Oh, I hated that old Diana...
 
I didn’t want her to be back.  My medication wasn’t expired, but I did have a second bottle that had just arrived from my mail order pharmacy.  I opened it and started using the fresh bottle, just to be on the safe side.
 
So, I guess you could say, I was THRILLED to find Mrs. Widow.
 
She made everything about my past week make sense.  It meant, no, I don’t have to go physical therapy.  (Physical Therapy bores the living daylights out of me.)  It means I am NOT turning into the old Diana.  These cognitive symptoms WILL go away.  It means the feeling will return to my thumb.  (It is already much improved.)
 
I was simply feeling the effects of a neuro-toxin.
 
Now, everything I read online, kept stressing all this stuff about “see a medical professional.”
 
I was really on the fence about that one-- hmmm... I had just seen a “medical professional” the day before, but, obviously he didn’t know I’d found a venomous spider crawling around in my laundry basket.
 
The death rates from black widow spider bites are very low.  One web page said 5 people out of 100, but that number seemed too high, because another website said nobody in the U.S. has died from a black widow bite in the past ten years.  (See what I mean about contradictory information on different sites?)
 
It was Saturday, so my General Practioner’s office was closed, and there was no way I was going to an E.R.  I mean, I’d already had this going on for a week.  It would be silly to go, truly.  The E.R. had more important stuff than this.
 
Then, Alex came downstairs, coughing, and complaining: “My inner ear hurts.”
 
Ah...  
 
“OK, son, put your shoes on.  We’re going to that walk-in place on First Street,” I said.
 
Easy enough.  Alex needed his ears checked, and some ear drops.  While we were there, I’d bring Mrs. Widow along for the ride, fill out a form for myself, and just mention it to the doc, so I could fulfill the “get checked by a medical professional” requirement.
 
I’m glad I brought Alex’s little movie player and packed him lunch in his lunchbox, because we had to wait close to two hours.  It was worth it, though, because he had a bad inner ear infection, and did need the drops.
 
Oh, but, then, it got very funny, when it came time to tell the doctor about the spider...
 
So, I told him about my week, and the strange symptoms, and how I had no idea what was causing it, but now that I had found this spider, I figured that she was the culprit behind it all...
 
I then pulled her out of the little Target bag I’d brought along with me.  I’d kept her hidden the whole time, so as to not scare anybody in the waiting area who was bug-phobic, (yeah, OK, I know, the correct term is arachnaphobia, but anyone who is scared of spiders tends to be scared of all creepy crawly things.)
 
The doctor was impressed: “Wow,” he said, “a real black widow.”
 
So, I showed him the picture I had printed out on the Internet, and pointed to the exact markings, positively identifying the spider.
 
“I want to get a picture of this to send to my friends,” he said, excitedly, pulling out his iPhone.
 
Well, as he was pulling out his iPhone, he dropped the critter carrier, and the lid popped off.  The spider crawled right out of the cage, and began walking across the examining table.
 
Alex and I began laughing.  We think bugs are funny.  
 
The doctor did not think bugs are funny.
 
He let out this high-pitched girly scream,  worthy of that annoying lady who did nothing but scream in the movie Indiana Jones II.
 
Alex began laughing so hard, tears were almost coming out of his eyes.
 
Together, we scooped Mrs. Widow back into her enclosure.
 
I’d brought along information I’d printed out from the Internet about black widow bites and symptoms.
 
The doctor read it all with great interest and made notes in his chart.
 
Then he said: “Do you want pain killers?  Muscle relaxants?  Antibiotics?”
 
“No, no, and no, but thanks for the offer,” I said.  “I have a healthy immune system, and I think I’m through the worst of it.  So, I am just going to let nature take its course.”
 
(Yes, I know I have fibromyalgia, but statistically, 60% of people with fibromyalgia actually have heightened immune systems and get sick less frequently than the rest of the general population.  The other 40% is the opposite, and gets sick more easily. I very rarely get sick, and neither does Alex.  Both of us usually just go to the doctor once a year for a check-up, and that’s it.)
 
I’m glad we went there for Alex’s ear thing, otherwise it would have been a complete waste of time.  That doctor knew NOTHING about black widow bites, and I did more educating of him, than he did of providing me with new info.
 
Ah, well, hearing him laugh like a girl was pretty funny, though.
 
I have some video of Mrs. Widow, in her enclosure, and Alex imitating the doctor shrieking like a girl.  I will upload those to YouTube tomorrow.  Alex does a pretty good “girlie-shreaking doc” impression.
 
We were going to keep the spider one more day, in case Alex wanted to show his class, but my husband wanted to set the spider free tonight.  It was getting late and we’d already had the spider in captivity for about 36 hours.
 
“It’s time to let her go,” he said.  
 
We’d already decided as a family that spiders had been here on earth well before we ever were, and bites like this are very rare.  Jovani and I had searched the house for more black widows, but found only a few Daddy Long Legs and other such harmless little house spiders.  
 
So, she had probably just crawled into the garage, probably wandering in from the farm next door.
 
As the sun was setting, my husband carefully let her go, being very gentle as he “shooed” her out of the critter keeper.  She had already begun spinning herself a web in there and seemed in no hurry to leave.
 
Jovani gave the tank and little shake and directed her under our fence, toward the farm field.  (The farm is unoccupied.  It is just filled with lots and lots of wild critters, and a bunch of fruit trees.)
 
“Go, find your family,” Jovani said, as we watched her crawl away, under the fence.
 
I’m glad we didn’t kill her.  I felt no malevolence toward her at all.  Not a bit-- just like when our cat Oliver disappeared, and we finally figured she was carried off by a mountain lion.  (We found other mountain lion “kills” in the field behind the house.)  I never got mad at the lion, just for being a lion.
 
This spider probably bit me because he’d climbed into a nice warm t-shirt, and then I had to go and ruin things by yanking that shirt on.  Where did she go after she bit me?  Did she stay in my shirt the rest of the day?  Did she then end up in the basket when I changed into my PJs at bedtime?  Had she been in the bedroom laundry basket all week, sleeping in the same room as Alex and I?  (Alex likes to sleep next to me when Jovani is away traveling.)
 
I guess we’ll never know.
 
But, here is what I learned...
 
Well, if you see a black widow, just leave it be.  
 
Be aware that you will likely NOT see the red hour glass if it is crawling on the ground.  It is on their abdomen, which means their belly, so unless the spider is UPSIDE-DOWN, you will not see the hourglass.  When the spider is right-side up, it looks like a shiny, large black spider.  (Yes, they are large, up to two inches.)  If it is in a web, you do have a chance of seeing the abdomen.  There are five species of black widow, and some have white, yellow, or brown markings.  
 
The males are not venomous.  The females do not always eat the males.  If the female has recently eaten, she will leave the male alone after mating.  A female black widow spider can live up to 5 years.  They are non-aggressive, and tend to hide rather than fight.  They will only bite if they feel threatened, pinched or poked.  
 
While their venom is more toxic than that of most poisonous snakes, because the amount they release is so much smaller, most adults can recover from a bite without complications.  There is an anti-venom, but not all ERs carry it, and not all people are good candidates for the anti-venom.  Some people can have allergic reactions to it, and taking the spider anti-venom, can make you less responsive to snake anti-venom, should you ever be bitten by a snake.  If you are bitten, and decide to go to the ER, try to bring the spider with you for positive identification.
 
Otherwise, if you’re at home, clean the bite area to prevent infection.  The black widow has tiny fangs, so the bite marks will be very small.  They may not be noticeable at all.  Apply heat and ice to the affected area.  (Turns out what I was doing by instinct is what all the websites recommended anyway.)
 
The only thing I haven’t done is taken any pain medication, (all the sites talk about taking some.)  While I do get still get some intense spasms in both my shoulder and back, I find applying heat and ice helps calm the spasms down.  The only time it gets really uncomfortable, is when I am away from the house, and do not have an ice pack handy.
 
But, I gave up all painkillers last February after joining a migraine support group and learning daily use of any kind of painkiller (even over-the-counter) increases your overall pain levels.  Your body loses some of its natural abilities to control pain.  So, even in a case like this, I let my body do its thing, and keep the Tylenol, Aleve and Ibuprofen bottles shut.  And, everytime a doctor whips out a prescription pad, I simply say: “No, thank you.”
 
Well, that’s my black widow story.  I imagine Mrs. Widow is out there in the field somewhere, tonight, telling her half of the story to her spider friends, (and, then maybe afterwards she’ll eat them...)  Spiders are cannibals...  Fascinating little buggers, eh?
 
Well, I’ll try to get those movies posted tomorrow.  She really was a most impressive little spider.
 
# # #
 
 
 
 
 
An interesting week
Sunday, October 5, 2008