A dad feared he'd been spiked on a boozy trip to a pub beer garden with pals - only to discover it was a horror reaction to a false widow spider bite. Nathan Green felt the 'ticklish' moment the eight-legged fiend sunk its fangs into the back of his right calf while out with pals, but thought nothing of it and merely brushed the irritant away.
The tug company manager tumbled into bed shivering and feeling unwell and the following day woke up feeling 'like he'd been run over' - fearing he'd fallen victim to a drink spiking. But when a 'small football-sized' blister bubbled up on his right calf and his leg ballooned to triple its size 24 hours later, he was ordered to go to A&E by wife Dawn Green.There, doctors assessed the 50-year-old's bright red and swollen leg and revealed it was a reaction to a spider bite.
Stomach-churning photos show how yellow blisters erupted on the dad-of-three's leg before doctors were forced to pierce and drain them - leaving him with a foot-long patch of raw, painful skin. Three months on from his ordeal, Nathan's leg is almost fully healed and he's now urging people to be wary of the tiny terrors and, if bitten, get medical help straight away.
Nathan, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, said: "You wouldn't think a little spider could do so much damage, it's unbelievable. I've been jumping around on boats and oil rigs all over the world and I've walked through jungles and swam in rivers, you name it I've done it, and I go to a pub and get bitten.
"Before [this happened], if my family saw a spider I would pick it up with my hand, open the window and throw them outside, they never worried me at all. But after getting whacked like this I'm cautious. If it has a skull on its back or looks like it may have a skull, they're getting it."
Nathan popped into a pub's beer garden and spent the afternoon with mates listening to music and drinking beer. An hour into his visit Nathan, who was wearing jeans and Chelsea boots, felt something on his leg but brushed it away.
When he got home at 10pm he felt under the weather and continued to feel ill the next day. Nathan went to James Paget University Hospital's A&E department in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where doctors cut and drained the blisters and hooked him up to an antibiotic IV drip.
Nathan said: "I was in the beer garden on a Sunday, it's my day off and I like to sit there, listen to the band and have a few beers. It was a hot day and I was out in the garden enjoying myself and talking to my mates.
"I felt something go up and tickle my leg a bit so I brushed my leg like you do. I didn't really think a lot of it. I was drinking away quite merrily and when I got home I started shaking and felt cold. I felt really rough and remember thinking 'this ain't right'.
"The next morning I woke up and I felt like I'd been run over, I couldn't go to work. I felt that bad, I thought that somebody had spiked me. I felt really, really ill.
"The wife said 'are you alright? You really don't look well'. On Tuesday morning I woke up and from my knee to my ankle was bright red, about three times the size it should be and it was rock solid.
"Then I noticed this blister on the back of my leg and within an hour it had doubled in size. By the time I got to A&E it had turned into a small football, every time I looked at it it got bigger. I'm bloody glad my wife made me go.
"The woman looked at it and said 'you've been bitten by a false widow spider'. She cut the blister and got all the stuff out of it. It was 30cm by 30cm, it was a big wound.
"I was shaking because my body had gone into anaphylactic shock, and my leg swelled up so much because it was trying to fight what was in there. When they cut the blister off it felt like somebody had got a hot iron and stuck it in the back of my leg, that's how painful it was.
"It wasn't the bite that hurt, but the aftermath. They put me on an antibiotic drip straight away, cleaned it, dressed and said to come back if it got worse before my follow-up appointment."
Nathan was sent home with antibiotics and a large dressing that saturated so quickly from the infected bite area it needed changing every six hours. Given how infected his leg was, Nathan needed to return before his next scheduled appointment to get it cleaned, re-dressed and more IV antibiotics pumped into his system.
Nathan said: "They gave me a big padding, a big nappy basically, for the back of my leg. This thing was soaking up every six hours and I had to change it. It started to get worse so I went back. They cleaned and swabbed it, along with other tests, and confirmed I'd been bitten by a false widow spider.
"I told them [pub staff] and they got it all sprayed just in case. The nightmare pretty much continued for the next three weeks but it got smaller."
Nathan said the pain caused by the tiny critter was so severe that he needed co-codamol to be able to stand and is now urging anyone bitten to get medical help.
Nathan said: "It's up there with the worst pain I've ever felt, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Three weeks later I was still hobbling around like an old man.
"The hospital said If I'd left it later it would have caused more damage to my leg. My advice to anyone who gets bitten is to go and get it checked out. I'm a hardened 'I'll-work-until-I-drop' type of geezer and I'm glad my wife insisted I go to A&E."
