A young woman who suffered a painful spider bite while eight months pregnant that left her with a necrotising leg and chronic pain says she is relieved to know her newborn baby was not affected by it.
Ketisley Aparecida Freitas Lessa said she could finally breathe easy when she held her baby daughter in her arms.
She is believed to have been bitten by a brown spider, an arachnid also known as violin spider, at her home in Apiai, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, when she was cleaning her bedroom on 5th January.
The 29-year-old law graduate said she was taking a rest on her bed when she discovered the spider sitting on her left leg.
Ketisley went to a local hospital’s emergency ward after noticing bite marks on her other leg.
As she did not feel any pain, medics did not give her any anti-arachnid serum, and instead prescribed her antibiotics and painkillers and sent her home.
But Ketisley went back to the clinic after starting to experience serious pain three days later.
She was hospitalised at the hospital’s maternity ward after medics diagnosed necrosis, a condition which causes human tissue to die due to a lack of blood flow.
Ketisley previously told local media: “It started to hurt a lot. I couldn’t walk.
“It also started to give me an allergic reaction all over my body. My skin was itching and turning red.”
The young woman added: “They did a blood test and found poison in my bloodstream which affected my clotting and could cause me to bleed.”
Ketisley was ordered to continue taking antibiotics at home.
Her pregnancy was reportedly not affected in any way by the bite but Ketisley admitted she felt uneasy until she finally gave birth to a healthy baby Mirella.
She said in a recent interview: “I was very scared and had an anxiety attack in the hospital, afraid of [the bite] affecting the baby.”
The mother reported that she felt calmer only in the final stretch of the pregnancy when the tests confirmed that her daughter was well and the arachnid bite would not interfere with the birth.
Despite being relieved and enjoying the baby’s first days of life, the spider bite brought trauma to Ketisley.
She, who always liked arachnids and even had six tattoos on her body, said they now scare her.
Brown spiders are common in warmer regions across the world.
They are usually not aggressive but bite in self-defence.
