In And Out Of Hallucinations From Brown Recluse Spider Bite, VA Woman Worried She'd Die

CRAWFORD COUNTY, VA — A Crawford County, Virginia, woman said she hallucinated off and on for several days after a venomous brown recluse spider bit her face as she recently kayaked the Staunton River from Gladys to Brookneal.

Sherri Maddox told news station WFXR she wasn’t concerned when it happened. The next day, she went to the Gretna Emergency Center and was treated with antibiotics

Her symptoms worsened. Her lip was swollen unnaturally, and the pain was so severe that Maddox cried.

On the third day, doctors concluded her symptoms were the result of a brown recluse spider bite.

Maddox was hospitalized for about a week. She told WFXR hallucinations went on for five days

“I just thought I was at my mom’s house or my sister’s house, and then I’d get out and go look out the hospital room and realized I was in the hospital,” Maddox said.

She thought pain medications caused the hallucinations but has since “heard from several different people that’s what the spider venom does.”

Brown recluse spider venom includes a neurotoxic component that can cause hallucinations. Three years ago, a Tennessee woman said she felt like she was hallucinating a few days after she awoke to an infestation of brown recluse spiders in her bedroom, CBS News reported.

Angela Wright’s story is extreme, and the hallucinations weren’t the worst of side effects after she was bitten by brown recluse spiders that had infested her apartment in Brentwood, Tennessee. She was “seconds from a stroke” after blood clots from the bites went to her lungs.

She told CBS in 2018 that she would have to take blood thinners for the rest of her life, and that doctors told her she shouldn’t have kids because of the blood clots.

Maddox, the kayaker, told WFXR she wasn’t sure she would live.

“I was just praying I wasn’t going to die,” Maddox said, “because I hear horror stories, and you look on the internet and see all this stuff.”

Although Maddox and others have had extreme reactions to brown recluse spider bites, the vast majority of people experience no or only minor symptoms, according to the Penn State Extension Service. Most people will itch, and the area around the bite may blister.

Still, anyone who has been bitten by such a spider should consult a doctor, experts say.

Brown recluse bite symptoms and signs include:

• Pain increasing over the first eight hours of being bitten.
• Fever, chills and body aches.
• A bite wound with a pale center that turns dark blue or purple, with a red ring around it.
• A bite wound that becomes an open sore and has dying skin around it.

Brown recluse spiders can be either light or medium brown, and they have a violin-shaped marking on their cephalothorax (the part of the body where the legs attach).

Brown recluse spiders are well established in all or parts of 16 South-Central and Midwest states. Though Virginia isn’t one of them, David Moore, an entomologist from Lynchburg, told WFXR he wouldn’t be surprised if the arachnid has made its way to the state.

In some cases, brown recluses hitch rides in packaging materials and items shipped areas where they’re established. They commonly hide in places such as rock crevices in nature and, inside, in places like packed-away garments and bedding, little-used drawers and attics in homes.