His holidays in the south of France turned into a tragedy: a Belgian sexagenarian had to be hospitalized 3 weeks after being stung by a violinist spider.
Not sure he will set foot in France anytime soon. The Belgian press echoes the misadventures of Robert, a Belgian sexagenarian who came to spend holidays with his wife in the south of the country, in Vaison-la-Romaine (Vaucluse). The man will remember neither the rock landscapes, nor the stone villages of the region, but rather a nasty spider bite which earned him three weeks of hospitalization.
At 69 years old, Robert was indeed the victim of a violinist spider, an arachnid species a priori not very sympathetic, endowed with a powerful venom, which tends to proliferate in the south of Europe. At first, when he woke up with the two bites – one on each knee – he didn’t panic, used to serving meals to the many insects in the area.
“Huge black balls”
“I thought it was going to be okay, but my knees started to swell, and two days later I felt very sick,” he explains to Laatste Nieuws. Robert then went to the hospital where he received painkillers and antibiotics, before being sent home.
“But at night, I woke up with 40.2 fever, and the two bites had turned into huge black balls,” he says. He was then transported to Avignon hospital. “The surgeon explained that the infections were on the rise, towards my bones and my tissues, and that it could kill my cells.”
Risk of amputation
Robert was therefore operated on urgently. For their part, the doctors had to warn him: “they made me understand that the infection was so important that I might have to be amputated”. After fifteen days of hospitalization, the disillusioned holidaymaker was finally transferred to the Bruges hospital, where he stayed for an additional week. Back at his home, he had to continue his antibiotic treatment but he was nevertheless able to keep all his limbs.
Small but poisonous, the violinist spider, whose real name is loxosceles reclusa (brown recluse), remains rare in France. The first bite of this spider in France dates back to 2009. At the time, the man had to undergo a skin graft. While these effects seem impressive, they remain relatively rare.
Treated quickly, brown recluse bites may be limited to an injury the size and appearance of a boil, which does not require surgery. “I had bad luck,” said Robert, pragmatic.
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