A mum has issued a warning after she was left with shocking injuries from the UK’s most venomous spider.
Delyth Hughes suffered what she believes to have been a spider bite, and within hours of when it happened she was losing feeling in her left leg as it began to fill with pus.
The mum-of-two began feeling nauseous and dizzy, and in the following days the bite site became bruised and discoloured.
Her leg went numb as she experienced pins and needles, prompting concern amongst friends and family, North Wales Live reports .
The mum from Prestatyn, Denbighshire, said: “They persuaded me to get it checked out. I’m glad I did, or it might have ended with a different story for me if the poison had spread through my body.”
The 29-year-old thinks that she was bitten when she sat besides her dad in his tractor at the family farm in Caerwys, Flintshire.
She remembered the “sensation” of something crawling on her leg but didn’t see a spider or feel the pain of a bite.
She added: “My leg was getting really painful. It was throbbing badly and I began feeling nauseous. I had a terrible headache and I was suffering from dizzy spells.”
When she examined her leg she found two tiny puncture wounds next to one another.
The bite site bruised quickly and continued to swell over the coming days.
On advice from friends, she began bathing her leg in an attempt to gain relief. It didn’t work. “My leg was still numb with a kind of pins-and-needles feeling,” said the single mum.
Five days after the bite, Delyth secured an appointment at Holywell Community Hospital. The wound was lanced, drained of pus and she was prescribed antibiotic tablets.
“The staff told me I was lucky I had come in when I did as the poison was still in my blood,” she said. “I was told to leave it for a couple of days and, if it didn’t improve, I would need to go on IV antibiotics.”
It is thought the pus may have resulted from secondary infection following the bite. As Delyth was to discover, she wasn’t the only victim.
“The hospital staff told me they’d seen a few people recently with the same symptoms. They suspected they were all caused by spider bites - probably from a false widow.”
False widow spiders are the UK’s most venomous spider. Their bite can be nasty but is usually no worse than a wasp sting.
A few years ago a 33-year-old man from Rhyl was left with an "oozing hole" in his elbow after being bitten by a false widow.
Similarly, former Wrexham AFC striker James Gray spent time in hospital after the spider sank its fangs into his arm.
According to experts, symptoms can include pain, swelling, nausea, tremors and altered blood pressure.
Michel Dugon, from the National University of Ireland in Galway, told the Daily Star: “In addition to their medically significant venom, noble false widows are extremely competitive. This species is here to stay, and we must learn how to live with it.”
For Delyth, it would be 12 weeks before the bruises had faded and the swelling went down.
Despite being told her injury may have been caused by a false widow spider, she has no way of knowing for sure: while spider bites can leave distinctive fang marks, they are usually too small to be clearly visible to the human eye.
Other bugs also bite, from ants to flies, and they can leave multiple marks that resemble fang wounds.
All Delyth knows for certain is that it left her with a painful injury that could have ended worse than it did.
Since it happened, in June 2020, she has fully recovered and 10 months ago gave birth to her second child.
“My advice to anyone who is bitten is to go and get it checked out,” she said. “Had it not been for my friends, I might have left it until it was too late.”
