April 6, 2008.….June 9, 2008
Moving these “bite photos” from my camera to my computer made me realize I need to finish getting this story written before I forget the details. Short term memory loss, long term memory loss, gee whiz, doesn’t everybody have difficulty remembering EVERY thing?
When I took this first photo on March 8, 2008, I had absolutely no idea what was about to happen, not only to my arm, but, my entire body and my life.
I believed I had been bitten by a spider while helping a friend unpack clothing from India, on Monday, March 3, 2008. My arm was normal in the morning when I went to his home, and, while I was there, I felt like I had received a VERY itchy mosquito bite. When I got home, I applied some Sunbreeze Oil (the liquid version of “Tiger Balm”) to it and assumed it would go away without issue.
5 days later it seemed a little bit itchier, but I wasn’t too concerned. I’d always had reactions to bee stings and scorpions. As much as I hate to take “medications”, I carry an antihistamine in my purse, just in case I am bitten and need to stop the “symptoms” the bites can cause. I don’t like to “mask” symptoms, but when my lymph glands begin to swell and I experience difficulty breathing, I’ll take a pill with possible side effects to avoid what could happen if I didn’t. I have had to take a Benadryl about half a dozen times in the past 20 years to stop the symptoms caused by a scorpion or a hornet.
Besides, I am one of the healthiest people I know, what could happen? I'll never ask that again !
Even though I wasn’t too concerned “something” told me this bite was different, so, I took a photo of my arm and the red spot with a penny next to it for reference as to it‘s size.
On Monday, March 10, I had to replace a kitchen sink. The bite was still itching but I had work to do. I had to use my bite arm (my right arm) to run the jigsaw and the drill, never dreaming I was stirring up venom in the wound area.
That evening it was obviously growing and I was a little worried when I went to bed.
When I awoke in the morning it had blown up to the size of a penny over night, with the circle of pimplish-looking things forming around the circumference of the circle. It looked like it was going to continue to grow. It was time to find out what was causing this volcanic eruption on my arm, and my gut feeling told me it looked like the photos I had seen on the internet a few years ago of what happens when a brown recluse spider bites someone. I knew there was no antivenin to fight the reactions. I also knew people lost limbs and lives because of them.
I was up early and couldn’t call anyone so I typed “brown recluse spider bite” into my Google search engine and when the photos came onto the screen, there was no question in my mind. After reading the available information thoroughly, I realized traditional medicine still had no treatments for brown recluse spider bites. Once started, the venom just eats away at the flesh and doctors suggest cutting away the flesh or injecting the area with steroids, neither of which have any guarantees of success and, according to the internet, caused a longer healing time.
I called my acupuncture physician/friend Susan, and made an appointment to see her the following day. In the meantime, she told me to start applying Golden Yellow-a Chinese drawing suave we had used with great success on an old friend of mine who’d had an infection.
She looked at the wound on Wednesday and we discussed ordering a poison detox from an associate
of hers who had been practicing oriental medicine for many, many years. We weren’t too concerned as we had great confidence in Oriental Medicine’s ability to cure. We didn’t order the super-detox, it was a month long treatment and it’s cost was over $300. Susan did a detox needle treatment, which made me feel better, and I went home, promising not to do anything but rest. We thought if we could keep my body calm the venom wouldn’t be able to move away from the wound site and the drawing suave should pull it out in a few days.
Thursday morning the wound site was a little bigger. The circle of “pimples” which had appeared yesterday was now part of the open wound and there was another circle of “pimples” around the outside of that. I called Lynn Deen, a healer-friend who does Meridian Stress Assessments with a high tech frequency testing machine. I decided I needed to make sure exactly what I was dealing with, and I knew Lynn could help me. She and Susan have worked together to heal many individuals with a variety of problems. I hadn’t called her first as her remedies generally take time before working, as most natural healing remedies do. They work with the body to cure and heal without masking the symptoms, like making the pain or the itch go away. Now, I would rely on her expertise to confirm my suspicions.
She told me to come into town, she would fit me into her afternoon. I felt better just knowing we would be able to identify what was causing this growing volcano on my arm.
The frequency test showed the venom of the poisonous brown recluse spider lurking in my body. Well, at least we knew for sure what we were dealing with. She put a series of frequencies into hydrolyzed water and prescribed starting with more than the usual 1 drop 3 times per day under the tongue, she wanted me to start with 3 drops under the tongue 3 times per day. The technology behind the Meridian Stress Assessment Machine is quite amazing, based on the concept everything has a frequency, a vibration unique to it. When she wants to eliminate it from the body, she puts the frequency into the hydrolyzed water and with time, it “pushes” the “bad guys” out. Before I left her office, I put 3 drops under my tongue and drove off. She also asked the pendulum whether the drawing suave was strong enough and it said it wasn’t. When I redressed the wound I used Icthamol, a petroleum based drawing suave used to “pull infections” out of wounds in livestock. She was also able to put frequencies of a few homeopathic antevenin cures in the water too.
Whenever I am in Gainesville I feel a need to accomplish more than just one task, so I stopped at Office Max on my way out of town. As I drove away from Lynn’s office I was hoping I wouldn’t have an adverse affect from the drops, but it was too late to worry about it now, besides, it was only 3 drops under my tongue, how bad could the reaction be? I should stop asking questions like that;) !
I collected my purchases and as I was standing at the cash register listening to the woman ask how I felt today, the room began to spin and I grabbed onto the counter and said, “Fine thanks” while thinking to myself, good grief, I hope I don’t faint here, just let me get out to my truck. She kept chit-chatting while I held on to the counter, trying to smile, wishing she would finish and let me go. Lynn’s drops were proving to be powerful medicine.
Finally, she stopped talking and I walked out to my truck and sat in the driver’s seat until the waves of nausea stopped washing over me. It took several minutes of deep breathing but I felt fine after awhile and drove home. I called my mother to let her know I wasn’t doing too well and also, to have someone “with me” for the 45 minute drive.
Friday night I dined at a local restaurant, owned by friends of mine. Even though my ugly wound was wrapped in gauze with the drawing suave in place, they all expressed great concern for me. They had a bad feeling and I try not to entertain negative energy, so I treid not to hear their worries. I always have such positive thinking, my arm could be rotting off and I will smile and say it will be fine.
On the way back to my house, I called my friend, Lee. She was supposed to be camping tonight at Fanning Springs and performing music on Saturday, and with the rain coming in, I had to offer my extra bedroom to her. Besides, a little company right now would take my mind off this THING on my arm.
Lee thankfully accepted and arrived at my home a few hours later. I was just getting ready to do a Moxa treatment on my arm so we chatted while I burnt the Moxa stick and waved it close to my wound. Lynn, my healer friend, had suggested I do regular Moxa treatments on the wound because when Moxa is burned it vibrates at the same frequency as the human cell helping them grow while destroying the cells that don’t belong there.
After the treatment I got very dizzy and had my first “episode” of palpitations and severe dizziness and nausea. Lee though perhaps it was the smoke from the Moxa causing my dizziness, she felt there was alot in the room, so I went outside. I was rather frightened but eventually my breathing returned to normal.
I had ordered and received some Microhydrin and decided to apply some directly to the wound. I had used it on a bad outbreak of shingles a few years previous and remembered it had burned and caused the area to bleed, but obliterated them quickly. Well, it burned and made my spider wound bleed so hoped it would lead heal it as quickly as it had worked on my shingles. Microhydrin works on micro-technology and brings oxygen to wounds at an accelerated pace.
I didn’t sleep well, worrying about my arm, realizing this was getting serious. If the wound continued to grow I could lose use of my right arm or, according to the internet, I could lose my life.
I had invited a friend over for the following morning so I could help him with his new website. While we were working I began to feel the nausea and palpitations come over me and thought hunger could be blamed, so I fixed myself an egg while helping him. We went to Fanning Springs and listened to Lee perform and then went to dinner. I had a dizzy episode at the restaurant and my friend offered to take me into Gainesville to the emergency room.
I called Susan and she explained to me what they would do in the emergency room with a scalpel and steroids and I knew I did not want either of those remedies. I decided I would continue on the treatments I had and she wanted me to come into her office on Sunday.
I was feeling pretty good on Sunday, I was getting used to the pain of the wound and the application of the drawing suave. I was also getting better at balancing the penny on my arm and taking photos with my left hand. What I didn’t like was the fact the wound looked like it was “sinking”. This meant the flesh below was deteriorating and I was going to have a big scar, well, that would be the best case scenario.
That afternoon, I looked down at my arm and my heart sank. There was a definite red line starting from the wound heading up my arm. This was not good. I had started on the colloidal silver too late and there was a definite infection developing.
I showed it to Susan and she called her acupuncture physician-friend and we ordered the “super-detox” to be shipped overnight the following day.
On the way home I called my friend Christopher and told him about the red line. He said he would work on a formula and would call me back.
When I got home I was nervous and worried and called him again. He said he had spoken to some doctors and I should come over. I headed to his home, just a few minutes from my house, and found him crushing Neem tree leaves and mixing a potion from a recipe given to him by a doctor-psychic-monk friend he had spoken to in India. I had the whole world working on healing me. This was good.
Christopher said his doctor friend told him to crush the leaves and mix some yucca into it. Christopher told the doctor in India he didn’t have any yucca and the man on the other end of the line told him in a very strong Indian-accent, “Yes, you do. I see it in your medicine cabinet. It is on the third shelf in the
middle in a brown bottle.”
Christopher went back to his medicine cabinet to look again and told the good doctor there was no yucca there. The doctor nearly yelled his answer, “Yes, there is, I see it, it is right there. It is in the big medicine cabinet with all the herbs on the third shelf in the brown bottle”.
Christopher then realized the holy man was talking about the kitchen cabinet where he kept all his from his grandmother's healing days-she was a Blackfoot Indian Healer. He went to the proper “medicine cabinet“ and there it was, on the third shelf in the brown bottle, just as the man had described to Christopher from the other side of the earth.
I sat there listening and taking this all in. I figured if someone from the other side of the earth could see into Christopher’s kitchen, I wanted him helping me and I would be fine, I would be fine, I would be fine, I would be fine, I would be fine, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can... well, you get the idea.
After Christopher applied the poultice and we wrapped gauze around it, we sat on the porch for awhile, Christopher singing medicine songs and beating on his grandmother’s drum. This was the drum Christopher had lent me for my drumming circle the day I met him less than a month ago. So much had happened since then.
After awhile, I was getting sleepy and he sent me home with his Grandmother’s rose quartz crystal and an amethyst crystal and made me promise to call him if I needed him. I felt safe and very well protected.
Once I was home I worked online for a little while, to take my mind off my arm, and then things turned worse. My vision became blurred, I had nausea and diarrhea, palpitations, dry-metallic taste in my mouth, and when my legs started twitching uncontrollably, I called Chris and asked him to please hurry over. Then I called Susan and described my symptoms. She calmly asked if I could use the other phone while we talked and I said yes. She said dial 911. I was giving 911 directions on the land line with Susan holding on my cell phone when Chris arrived.
I lied down on the couch and put my feet up above my heart, per Susan’s instructions and Chris helped me cover up. I was freezing and sweating and shaking all at the same time. It took 25 minutes for the paramedics to arrive. Thank God it hadn’t taken the ambulance crew that long the night my husband died. I probably would have had a heart attack myself.
By the time the ambulance crew got there my vitals were back to normal-probably a good thing they hadn’t arrived earlier, heaven only knows what they would have given me “to stabilize me“. They offered me a ride to the hospital, but without insurance, $700 was a pretty expensive cab ride to Gainesville.
I looked at Christopher and he asked if I would like to take a ride to the hospital. I said, yes, I would love to, and we grabbed some water and headed out the door.
We laughed and talked all the way in to town. My leg tremors had stopped and the palpitations and the funny feelings I had were calming down as well. My biggest fear was the “red line of infection” on my arm, which seemed to be getting shorter, the Neem poultice was obviously working but I wanted some of western medicine’s strong antibiotics. I didn't mind using more than one form of healing !
When we arrived at the Emergency Room, the place was packed with really sick people. I filled out my paperwork and put it through a slot in the wall, as directed by the sign. I watched it fall into a stack of papers made out by people who were sitting in the emergency room who hadn‘t been checked in yet.
We sat for a few minutes and I got up to go to the bathroom. While I was in there I felt as if my deceased husband were in the room with me. Red’s spirit was so strong I expected him to appear before my eyes. I used the motion activated paper towel dispenser and dried my hands and walked to the door. I opened the door and the paper towel dispenser (about 5 feet away from me) was activated by some movement and dispensed another paper towel. I thanked Red for his support, that I welcomed his presence and that I knew he was glad I was at here this hospital, but I was going to go back out and see how long I would have to wait before seeing someone. I promised Red, if I left, I would go to the clinic first thing the next morning, but that I was wasn’t going to sit here all night waiting.
I came out of the rest room and told Christopher what had happened with the paper towel dispenser-he siad he wasn't surprised a bit, he'd felt his presence earlier and then I asked some folks who were heading into triage how long they had been there.
When they answered, disgustedly, “5 hours”, I told Christopher I wanted to go home and that I was so sorry to have brought him out this late at night. He laughed and said it was a beautiful night for a ride to town and back to the Nature Coast. No traffic to deal with either;)
He dropped me off at home and made me promise to call him if I needed him again. I said I would and went in to bed and went right to sleep. This thing was really wearing me out.
I took my morning “wound photo” and headed for the clinic the next morning, they opened at 8am and took walk-ins. I was very impressed with the staff when I saw the doctor in less than an hour. He prescribed antibiotics both orally and topically and I went home. At least I felt confident the infection would be taken care of. I picked up some yogurt with probiotics for my digestive system.
I continued to have the palpitations and other symptoms all week. The “super-detox” arrived and I started on that immediately, drinking the tea, taking the herbs and applying a new “super-detox-suave”.
I also ordered an advanced detoxification system manufactured by Enhanced Living to help speed up the detox process. I thought the Ion Spa worked by pulling toxins out through my feet, but it actually ionizes and alkalinizes all the cells in your body causing them to release toxins more easily. I came into the clinic and stuck my hands in the ionized water for 30 minutes. I was quite amazed with the powerful odors coming out of the water. I had to close my eyes as they were burning and I didn't want to breathe the harsh "stuff" back into my body, it was so acrid it took my breath away...and the stuff that was coming out of me was turning the water a nasty rusty color. This procedure is such a powerful detox people over 50 years of age are limited to treatments once every 3 days. I felt more energy when I left the clinic after the treatment then I had had in several days and was sure "I was cured". Positive-attitude-Diane!
After 3 days on the super-detox program from the acupuncture physician in Orlando the palpitations and accompanying symptoms began to subside and I started to break out in a rash. The poisons were coming out of me through my skin and I was glad to see them leave my system.
By the end of the day the rash covered my entire body and you couldn’t play “connect the dots” because they were so many they were connecting themselves.
The rash lasted for approximately one week and I felt better every day, well, almost. Over the next few days I figured out, whenever I ate more than a bite of food, my body would start to go into a “venom reaction” so I just began eating small amounts of food here and there and supplementing with my Sunrider foods. I had just received a stock order and had lots of Quinary-50 herbs to feed my 5 systems, I would heal quickly with all this "good stuff."
I also determined that each time I would try to do even a simple yoga pose, my body would start to react with palpitations and dizziness so I had to learn to do NOTHING.
Doing nothing is something I have never been good at, but with my life at stake, I was a quick study. I didn’t move from my couch except to go to the bathroom or get a yogurt or some of my Sunrider food herbs. These were keeping me alive and helping my body to heal at a faster pace. All of the reports I read said brown recluse spider bites take 3 months or longer to heal.
After being on the detox for 5 weeks, I knew I was over the worst of it. I was still wearing the detox suave on my arm and had occasional heart pounding. I woke up every morning feeling thankful to be alive and promised myself never to forget what it was like to wonder if I was going to live or die. I guess we are all going to die, but when you are spinning and feel as though you are “on the way out” you begin to realize the finality of death.
My husband died of a heart attack in November 2007 and I was grief stricken and in shock for months. I also suffered with low blood pressure (80/64) after his death, Susan attributed that to heart shock, after all, Red was only 51 and literally died on top of me, so it was quite a shock. We joked that perhaps Red was getting bored on the other side and he made the spider bite me to try to take me with him- he was a fiddle player and the distinctive mark on the back of the brown recluse is a fiddle.
Whatever the reason for the bite, my blood pressure came back to it’s normal 118/75 the week after I was bitten. Perhaps it happened to shock me into thinking more about me and my life than the life lost with my husband or perhaps it happened just to slow me down as I have now learned (a little bit) how to do NOTHING. I also went for 6 weeks without any sugar, alcohol, caffeine etc. so I got a GREAT detox.
One would think this would be the end of the spider bite story, but there’s a twist to this ending.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
6 weeks after the spider bite episode started and the wound was nearly healed, a strange, raised and puffy smile appeared inside it’s circumference. It was diagnosed as a flat wart. Someone I had come into contact with while my wound was bleeding had had warts. Warts are viruses that travel through the air. Learn something new every day, don‘t we?
So I tried a few more days of the detox suave and the wart just kept swelling and growing. Someone suggested a Castor oil patch so I tried that for 4 days but it was getting bigger and more painful as it stretched my newly formed skin. I didn’t want to use any viral creams on it, I had just accomplished healing a wound that “couldn’t be healed” and I didn’t want to apply any harsh chemicals.
Susan said she had heard a banana peel patch might remove it and at this point, I was ready to try anything. This wart was really painful and I just wanted my arm to be healed, I was over tending to this thing daily. Besides, I eat a banana almost every day, getting a fresh piece of peel every 24 hours would be easy.
I cut a piece off and put it’s squishy white side down against the wart on the freshly healed wound and kept it on 24 hours a day, refreshing it about once a day. It burnt when I put it on and when I took the peel off there was be a black mark on the peel that mirrored the wart.
It looked like it had stopped growing after the 2nd day, by the 5th day it was starting to decrease in thickness and the pain began to diminish. On the evening of the 7th day the wart literally fell off.
I now have the most perfect smiley face scar on my arm. I almost hope it remains a scar on my arm. It reminds me to slow down, to appreciate life and to smile, alot.
