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TIFU by swallowing a brown recluse, being sent to the ER, and almost dying.

This happened a couple weeks ago and I’m pretty much recovered now, but I guess I wanted to share as a warning in case anyone else ever experiences this.

So to make a long story very short, I keep water by my bed in a glass in case I get thirsty at night. A brown recluse had fallen in right around the time I woke up and needed a drink. I swallowed the thing and of course immediately realized I had swallowed something and my ONLY assumption was a spider, and I knew we had a few brown recluses in the house so I automatically assumed that’s what it was (I ended up being right in the worst way).

Now I knew from past anxiety googling that swallowing a dead spider is nothing to worry about. The venom is protein based and breaks down in the digestive tract. I had assumed that I had swallowed a dead one and just decided to try to go back to sleep after a mini panic attack and more frantic googling.

I woke up maybe two hours later with horrible pain in my stomach, muscle aches and HARD spasms, heat flashes, sweating and drooling profusely. I stumbled to find my partner (we sleep in separate rooms) and was rushed to the ER.

So what happened? Well the original assumption was that it bit me on my esophagus, but after lots of tests it turns out I had a stomach ulcer that I didn’t know about (that’s another long story) and the spider had very much been alive, and the venom had found it way into my bloodstream through the open wound in my stomach.

After a fuuuck ton of antibiotics and other drugs and a week long hospital stay Im mostly back to normal and I’m feeling mostly ok. I still feel achy and have a lot of paranoia about my drinks now.. I won’t be drinking water in the middle of the night anymore thats for sure.

I just wanted to tell this story just in case anyone else has water by their bed at night and to just go to the ER if you think you swallowed something. Just PLEASE be careful.

TLDR; swallowed a live venomous spider that poisoned me via stomach ulcer, got hospitalized for a week and lived to tell the tale.

Editgrammatical errors

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