A HOTEL manager feared spider eggs were growing inside her after a golf ball-sized bite swelled up on her back.
Emmeline Botfield became terrified she was hosting baby arachnids after a nasty nip left a sac repeatedly swelling up on her back.
The 46-year-old, from the West Midlands, was nabbed by the spider back in July 2018, when a trip to a beer garden turned sour.
After feeling a sting, she said the bite then blistered and left her bedridden for days with a fever while "excruciating" pins and needles shot down her arm.
Despite eventually healing, a year later the bubbly blister popped back with a vengeance, making her feel like she'd been "hit by a car".
Emmeline has since experienced a further six nasty "flare ups", and says the bite on her shoulder blade has even led to nerve damage.
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The bite also resulted in a recurring case of the shingles – an infection which resurfaces each time her immune system is low.
With her "flare ups" getting worse each time, she's now sharing her experience to raise awareness of the importance of getting bites checked out.
Emmeline said: "Things go through your head – I thought that the spider had laid eggs in my body.
"I was petrified. I thought that they'd laid dormant and it really did frighten me.
"I've had seven flare ups over the last couple of years and this most recent one was the worst it's ever been.
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"It felt like acid being poured onto my back and burning constantly, that's the only way I can describe it.
"And the pins and needles – the shock pain going through my arms was terrible."
Emmeline admitted that at first she dismissed the nip as nothing serious, despite it initially growing to the size of a ten pence piece.
She added: "I didn't think anything of it until that night when it blistered.
"Within 24 hours it literally flared up and there were several bubbles and black spikes in the pockets of the bite.
"I was feverish, went very poorly and had pins and needles down my arm."
It's literally like you've been hit by a car, you've got no energy, you feel dizzy and disorientated and have pains.
"I had my family bathe it with TCP and they were having to pull these almost water bubble pockets with spikes in out of my back," she continued.
"The pain was excruciating – I had four days off work, I was totally and utterly bedridden.
"I was delirious and had pyjama bottoms and a top that I could pull up the front and have down [at the back] and I couldn't have any covers on me or touch me, my skin was red raw."
She said her recurring flare ups normally begin with just an achy shoulder, before it swells up "like an ugly acid alien spot – this time I'd say it's the circumference of a golf ball."
"I didn't expect to have a long term reaction from the bite", she added.
"If anybody does get bitten, by a spider or any type of bite, get it checked over – don't be passed off by it because I've been left with something that now flares up.
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"If I could have had some other treatment or something initially to begin with and had it investigated more, I don't think I probably would be in the situation that I'm in now.
"Now I need to get them [doctors] to investigate it so I've got to force them to do something more for me rather than just pass me off."
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