THE ESSENTIAL
- Black widow spider bites usually result in an immediate and intense stinging sensation. Within an hour of envenomation, local pain, sweating and redness at the bite site may be noted.
On January 7, 26-year-old Fergus Farrelly woke up with a painful marble-sized lump on his penis. Three days later, the young man, from Shercock in County Cavan in Ireland, found that the bump had turned purple and was the size of a golf ball. “I felt like the pain was burning me. I had no idea what it was”he said Daily Mail. The same day, the twenty-something thus went to the hospital.
A few hours after being admitted to the emergency room, the lump burst. To alleviate the pain, the doctors prescribed several medications to the patient. The health professionals then made him do a battery of examinations. “They kept coming in and out to take swabs. I was lying in bed, I couldn’t even walk or move,” remembered the young man. The results of his blood test revealed that the samples contained the venom of a black widow spider.
“I was convinced that I was going to lose my penis”
“I was convinced that I was going to lose my penis. The doctors had never seen a bite mark there. So I was very worried”, confided the worker. The patient stayed four days in the hospital. Medical professionals put dressings on his wound and he received an infusion of antibiotics to prevent infection. “I was told that I would have died eventually if the lump hadn’t burst in the hospital, as it would probably have become infected. They said the venom could have spread and poisoned my bloodstream,” said Fergus Farrelly.
The Irishman was then discharged from the healthcare facility. “The pain didn’t really subside during the week I was at home”, he said. The patient had to take five tablets a day for a month. “Now I’m cured and I find it kind of funny but also scary, I had no idea how much damage spiders could do,” specified the young man, who now has a two centimeter scar on his penis.