Suspicious Spider Bites on LI, NY...Black Flesh Symptoms

Newsday ^ | 6/29/02

[DaughterofEve]

"In what experts say is a rare if not near-impossible occurrence on Long Island, at least three people have been diagnosed with brown recluse spider bites this week." "The clustering of three or four cases in one week left many skeptical."

[medved]

There are guys who fell into vats of DDT in the 50's and are still walking around without problems of any sort, the whole thing about DDT harming birds turns out to be BS of the worst sort, they had polio and malaria all but wiped of the planet in the 50's and that was apparently too good for them. Somehow or other ordinary people need to learn to make DDT and just spray it around whereever bugs are not wanted. This should be a political issue like school vouchers.

[Jefferson Adams]

All right. That Hobo spider is looking an awful lot like what I have always called a "bathtub spider". We find them here in the northwest in our bathtubs looking for water I presumed. I hope that's a different breed than the Hobo because I have had a very casual approach concerning the "bathtub" spider.

The "chevron" markings are the key -

Male Hobo Spider

Female Hobo Spider

[WVNan]

That's what I thought too. I grew up in the south and I was bitten as a teenager. The poison apparently got into my blood and I broke out in sores in several places from the initial bite. The doc back then just painted them with Jension (sp) Violet. It took me most of summer to get rid of them and they were painful, but we didn't think much about it at the time. In 92, I was bitten by one after we moved into a house that had been empty for some time. Again, after the initial sore I broke out in other places. I guess I'm not violently affected by them, and I never knew anyone else who was. We were always taught to beware of black widow spiders. The little brown ones were no big deal.

[ASP]

"Differential Diagnosis of Eschar and Ulceration:
A common initial diagnosis is that of a pruritic and papular ‘insect bite’ by the vast majority of patients.
Anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome ulcers
Leprosy
Aspergillosis
Mucormycosis
Brown recluse spider bite
Orf/Milker’s nodule
Coumadin necrosis
Plague
Cutaneous leishmaniasis
Rat bite fever
Cutaneous tuberculosis
Rickettsialpox
Ecthyma gangrenosum
Staphylococcal/Streptococcal ecthyma
Glanders
Tropical ulcer
Heparin necrosis
Tularemia
Typhus, Scrub and Tick

Differential Diagnosis for Ulceroglandular Syndromes
Cat scratch disease
Melioidosis
Chancroid
Plague
Glanders
Staphylococcal/Streptococcal adenitis
Herpes simplex infection
Tuberculosis
Lymphogranuloma venereum
Tularemia"
http://www.aad.org/BioInfo/Bio message2.html

[Twodees]

I had a recluse bite a few months ago. A trip to the doctor for antibiotics and prednisone and an application of triple antibiotic ointment on the center of the bite every three hours stopped the necrosis. The swelling went down within 10 days and the welt lasted for a month, but no pit, no scarring and no infection.

Those bites can cause the terrible damage you're reading bout by being ignored for a few days. This was my second bite. The first occurred at night and I went to the emergency room as soon as the bite hardened and swelled. Neither bite was allowed to progress beyond the initial symptoms, mainly because I was on guard after an acquaintance of a family member died following amputation of a leg for a neglected bite.

The report of the researcher having trouble getting the spider to bite showed that he went about it wrong. Those spiders get into your clothes or into bed with you usually, then bite when your clothes bind them or you roll on them. They're being crushed and the bite is the last thing they manage, usually.

[homeschool mama]

I don't *do* spiders. Nope. No Way.

My mother was bit by a brown recluse. Became quite ill and now has a horrid scar on her shin.

[Mitchell]

Ping....

Just a peculiar thing, in case you hadn't seen it.

[ASP]

More skepticism from professionals re dx of BRS bites:

6/30/02 PORT JEFFERSON (AP) - Three people were treated in a Long Island hospital for what doctors diagnosed as brown recluse spider bites, hospital officials said.
The patients, who are not related and come from scattered locations on Long Island, were treated in an oxygen chamber at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital, according to a hospital spokesman.

The poisonous spider, golden brown with a violin-shaped pattern on its head, is typically found in dry, dark areas, especially in Southern states. It is not common on Long Island.

Experts were surprised by the diagnoses.

"It just strikes me as unusual," said Dr. Thomas Fischer, an emergency room specialist at Stony Brook University Hospital. "I haven't come across one for years. It would be amazing, for me, for three people to be treated at one time on Long Island."

Scott Campbell, an entomologist for the Suffolk County Health Department, expressed doubt about the diagnoses.

"I have found no evidence that brown recluse spiders actually exist on Long Island," he said.

http://www.buffalonews.com/edi torial/20020630/4039266.asp

[ASP]

Peculiar. But what isn't nowadays.
"Darwin Vest vanished (6/3/200) without a trace..in Idaho...(he)was an expert on spider, snake and plant poisons...testified in court cases across the country about poisonous bites, lectured and wrote on the subject and was featured on the Discovery Channel...He did covert stuff with the CIA and the FBI."
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSScien ce0003/12_spider2.html

[ASP]

Correction: Died 6/3/99

[Wednesday's Child]

In today's Newsday:As concerned Long Islanders called the Suffolk County Health Department yesterday to report possible brown recluse spider bites and offer specimens of eight-legged critters trapped in Tupperware, officials asked Mather Memorial Hospital to help them eliminate an even more worrying possibility - anthrax.
NEWSDAY

[nravoter]

My Dad got bitten by one of these things several years ago--messed his hand up for almost a year.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Anyone ever heard of an extremely poisonous brown recluse - black widow cross?

The reclusive brown widow? The widowed black recluse?

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Distance from Orient Point to Plum Island is less than 2 nautical miles. (Just took the ferry through Plum Gut on Sunday.)

[DaughterofEve]

I pray to God that it is not possible that it took them this long to think of this.

[Wednesday's Child]

I hope not too. Mather still has not identified where the first five people live or where they were when they were bitten and now we have three more in a fairly close area( W. Babylon, Dix Hills and Melville) which are probably no more than five miles apart! I hope we don't have to wait too much longer to find out what's going on.

[ASP]

Update: 99% sure of BRS bites, not amthrax. I'm mot convinced.
http://www.newsday.com/news/lo cal/longisland/ny-lispid0703.story?coll=ny%2Dhom epage%2Dmore%2Dbreaking%2Dnews

[Wednesday's Child]

I'm not totally convinced either. Just "suppose" it is anthrax, are they trying to stall off panic? On the other hand "suppose" it's recluse bites. Why all of a sudden? I've been under the impression that we've always had recluses on LI. I could certainly be confusing the recluse with the hobo or wolf spider ( or any other type), but..........it's really disturbing that all of a sudden people are being bitten and need more treatment than just antibiotics.

[RIGHT IN SEATTLE]

RECLUSE

[IGNATIUS]

Agreed on DDT.Pine beetles devastated the Pinyon Pine forests of Southern CO and Northern NM this past year.There is only one weak sister insecticide still available to treat unaffected trees and nothing strong enough to kill the little devils in affected ones(so they won't fly and kill other trees).

I would have paid a thousand bucks last summer for 50 gallons of WWII strength DDT.Could have saved a thousand beautiful century old trees on our place.

Re scorpions--- we have them aplenty in Southeastern Colorado.Never saw them thirty yrs in Denver but warmer here they survive.Are stirred up by excavation.Saw hundreds after digging a basement in caprock.The first year we enjoyed a nightly "scorpion stomp" at dusk--use a blacklight they fluoresce bright yellow one can see for ten feet.Got careless and one finally bit the backside of my thumb.Felt like red hot needles jabbed into the bone---worse by far initially than a yellowjacket bite.But after a few minutes it began to subside and after a half hour there was no redness,swelling or pain.Next year we only saw a few dozen all summer.