I lay on my back with my teeth clenched and my hands gripping the sides of a hospital bed. A crowd of strangers in white coats filled the tiny room. Waves of pain lapped from my abdomen into my chest as the venom worked its way toward my heart.
An experimental antivenin drug was about to be injected into my bloodstream, and while I waited for the needle to go in, I reflected that if anyone in the world was the right person to be bitten by a black widow spider, I was that guy.
As a professional outdoorsman, I spend a lot of time around things that can bite, claw, stab or otherwise attack me. I have been lucky with snakes and reckless with bears. I have had some close calls with lionfish.
It figures that the thing to finally nail me would be living on my own front porch.
The black widow’s graceful form and red hourglass marking have made it America’s most recognizable spider. The Eastern species, Latrodectus mactans, is common from Florida to New York and as far west as Texas.
Black widows are surprisingly shy and retiring.
Over the course of your life, you have probably walked past hundreds without noticing. Each one packs enough venom to lay out a heavyweight boxer for days, yet globally only a few people each year are killed by their bites.
Widow webs are easy to identify, messy and close to the ground. I spotted the first one knitted against the steps of my front porch, in Albemarle County, Va. A little black ballerina was balanced in the back of it.
I regretted killing her, but she was too close to an area where my children play. I blasted her with wasp spray, and she dropped out of her web.
I hunted for more to photograph and eliminate.
The perimeter of my house turned out to harbor a village of black widow webs.
I racked up as many as a dozen little black-and-red trophies a day. Fascinated by our proximity, I sought to learn more about these deadly neighbors.
The black widow is unfairly named. Female spiders rarely kill the male after mating, and possibly only in captivity. The male looks very different from the mature female; he is smaller and brownish. (The hourglass marking is quite variable in both sexes.) Both sexes carry the same venom, but the females have more of it and their fangs can inject it deeper.
MY LEFT FOOT
One warm spring afternoon, I decided to go fishing for dinner. On the same front porch where I had removed so many black widows, I kept a pair of water shoes and some tackle. I put them both in my car and drove eight miles to my favored hole.
I donned the shoes before walking to the edge of the water. Within about a dozen steps, I felt a stinging sensation on the second toe of my left foot, as if there had been a thorn inside the shoe. Then the pain increased to about that of a wasp’s sting. I sat on a rock and removed the shoe. The squashed remains of a spider were smeared across the insole.
For a long moment, I stared at my throbbing toe and wondered what to do.
Some people are more affected by the venom than others. Most healthy adults experience a lot of pain and recover on their own. But others become incapacitated, and some die. Which group would I fall into? Or had I been bitten by something else entirely? Why make a big deal out of nothing?
I decided to wait and find out before getting behind the wheel. I dipped my foot into the cool water and decided I might as well pass the time by fishing.
Three catfish later, symptoms were progressing. I felt a warmth in my abdomen. This turned into pressure, which became a painful cramping. There could be no more denial. I carried my fish up the hill to my car and headed for the University of Virginia hospital, in Charlottesville.
NO QUICK FIX
I knew the emergency room might not be able to do much. My research had taught me that while an antivenin exists, few patients actually get it.
The medicine has changed very little since 1895, when it was discovered by a French physician, Albert Calmette. By injecting spider or snake venom into a horse, Calmette induced symptoms of a bite, causing the body to produce antivenin. Blood could be drawn from the horse, and the substance could be isolated and stored for later use.
While the antivenin has saved many lives, it carries dangers of its own. Some patients have a life-threatening allergy to horse proteins. So the medicine is given only if the victim seems to be at death’s door; most patients are expected to tough it out, an ordeal that can take days.
That night, I was the hospital’s closest thing to a rock star. A parade of residents and medical students stopped in my room to gawk at me; few had ever seen a black widow patient. By now, the pain had crept into my lower chest, sending out waves of muscle spasms.
With all the attention I was getting, I wondered where the good medications were. Where was the morphine? The muscle relaxers? My answer arrived in the person of Dr. Christopher Holstege, a calm toxicologist who had the longest conversation with me that any doctor has ever bothered to have.
Holstege finally explained what was on his mind. The hospital was one of several conducting a study to test a new form of antivenin, and wanted me to be a guinea pig. The drug, Analatro, was made in sheep rather than horses, and was processed differently, so it had fewer impurities to which the body could react.
It sounded promising, but there were risks. First, I could not take pain medications that would mask the drug’s effects: no muscle relaxers to fight the spasms that already gripped my rib cage like a vise. Second, the side effects were not well understood.
Finally, there was a 50 percent chance that I would not get the antivenin at all but a placebo. I would be only the fourth patient to participate. Two of my predecessors had received the placebo. It all sounded so interesting that I could not bear not to volunteer. (I was also promised a payment of $60.) SPIN THE WHEEL
My symptoms progressed as I waited. My biceps cramped. I shivered and twitched uncontrollably. I thought of the stringer of catfish waiting on my porch and regretted its waste. At midnight, six hours after the bite, the mysterious substance was ready. The room was crowded with doctors, nurses and medical students who were silent as the substance was injected.
I felt a warm sensation in my upper arm, followed by the kind of rush that comes from a recreational drug. A wonderful warm flow spread from my left arm into my chest, then my abdomen.
“This definitely wasn’t the placebo,” I said in a dreamy voice.
SO I DIDN’T DIE
It could take years of study before the drug is ready, but if Analatro is approved, it could completely change the way black widow bites are treated. Instead of making patients wait through days of pain to avoid an allergic reaction to the equine proteins, doctors could administer antivenin immediately and discharge them within hours.
When I got home at 4 a.m., I limped up the stairs and collapsed into bed. The next afternoon, I hopped down to the kitchen to make coffee. There on the kitchen floor, I spied a little brown spider. I dropped a jar over it and captured an excellent specimen of a male black widow, dainty and thinner than its sisters. I took a series of photographs, and then it met its end.
ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 09/23/2013