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An unwanted visit from a brown recluse spider spells grief for USU student in France By
Kalleen Kidd
When she left to study for a month in France, Melanie Nelson, a student at Utah State University, never gave her safety a second thought. In fact she was bothered when she saw that insurance was included in the price of her program. "I thought, what a waste of money, like anyone is going to get hurt," Nelson said. Half way through her term Nelson found herself living what she thought was only folklore. A brown recluse spider crawled into a hole in her leg and laid eggs. "I never believed any of the stories about spiders laying eggs inside of people, and now that is me, I couldn't wait to tell people my story," Nelson said. Last summer Nelson signed up for the study abroad program through USU in Annecy, Fance. The program would enable to learn about the culture and study French at IFALPS, Institute of French in the Alps. While she was there she stayed with a host family and biked 12 miles every to school for her four hour French lesson. Annecy is a small city at the base of the Alps at a fresh water lake. It would only take an hour to walk though the town that surrounds the lake. Nelson's host father described it as "the place in Europe everyone wants to live." Two weeks after arriving in Annecy, Nelson, went with a group of seven others canyoning. Canyoning is an extreme sport where people are taken to the top of a mountain and go through all kinds of adventures to reach the bottom. Nelson said her trip included repelling down rock and a waterfall, treading through a river, siding down water slides and jumping from cliff to cliff. "Going into it all I knew was that apparently six people died last year doing it," Nelson said. "But it was obvious that precaution was enhanced so I wasn't worried." After canyoning she noticed a bump on her leg sort of like a mosquito bite, but couln't figure out what it was. "I had this gigantic bite thing on my left thigh; it had a hole in the center, kind of like a crater. I wasn't concerned at first, but thought I should watch it," Nelson said. "When people saw it they would make it sound a lot worse that it was." She started hearing stories about people who were in bed for months after getting bit or who had to get their leg amputated. Progressively each day the bump got a little worse. One night her host mother gave her some ointment to put on her leg. The cream only seemed to aggravate the bump, making it larger and more painful. "At first it was just a standing pain, after that it hurt all the time," Nelson said. That's when she went to a pharmacy hoping to gain any kind of comfort. She wanted someone to tell her it was OK or what she needed to do to heal the pain. Instead the lady working there only gasped and told her to go see a doctor. That is when Nelson really started to worry and made an appointment with an English-speaking doctor on the other side of town. "When I got there I discovered the doctor only knew five words and poisonous and laying eggs were not part of them," Nelson said. "He claimed to know what the problem was, prescribed some drug and told me to come back later that week. If my leg wasn't better he would cut into the bite." The doctor told her that a spider was now burrowed in her flesh. As the days went by she said the bite only got worse. It got bigger and turned black. She had to be careful not to rub it against anything, a difficult task when she rode her bike everywhere. Elevating her leg was all she could do to gain any comfort. "When I went back to the doctor, he took one look at my leg and told me I had to go into surgery right away," Nelson said. The doctor called the surgeon while Nelson and her friend rode their bikes to the hospital. They arrived at the hospital at 10 a.m. but had to wait four hours because she had to have an empty stomach going into surgery. The French hospital was completely different than an American one. The inside was painted green, including the ceiling. The walls had no pictures on them. Nelson said there was nothing to do while they waited. There was no television to watch and couldn't read a book because they were all in French. "Since there was nothing else to do my friend and I just laid down together on one of the beds and slept while we waited," said Nelson. "Every once in a while I would wake up to someone commenting on the cute American girls asleep." Once the doctors felt it was safe, Nelson went into surgery. She wasn't scared. She thought the surgery only consisted of cutting a small hole and pulling the spider out. "They kept calling me the little girl. As I started to go under I remember them saying 'She's a Mormon from Utah," Nelson said. When she woke up after the surgery, the first thing she did was ask the nurse what time it was. The nurse replied in French, it came as a sock, Nelson expected to hear English. "It was like a nightmare, everyone kept speaking French." Nelson said. She was laying on a bed while a thick pile of heavy blanket on top. The bed was like a cot with bars on the side. It wasn't until later that Nelson realized the surgery was more serious than she originally thought. The pile of blankets were making her hot and she asked a nurse to take them off. "As she pulled the blankets off I saw a huge bandage on my leg and a puddle of blood on my bed," Nelson said. When her professor came that evening he was able to communicate with the doctor getting the whole story. Before this time Nelson had no idea the spider had laid eggs. The doctor said that the eggs caused an abscess to develop which they removed. They had to cut a hole the size of a quarter in diameter and 2 inches deep into her leg. Nelsons parents were aware of her spider bite from earlier conversations but did not hear about the surgery until after it was over. She called her mom and work and told her she just had surgery. "I was totally shocked, but Melanie has such strength that I didn't worry about her. If she had asked me to come I would have jumped on a plane in a second, but she didn't," said Nelson's mother Ruth. That night Nelson experienced the beginning of her five week healing process. Instead of receiving stitches the wound had to heal itself from the inside out. A nurse came to her house everyday to treat the wound. She would first pull out several inches of gauze that filled the inside of the hole. Then she would disinfect it, and fill it back up, this time with a little less gauze. "It hurt worse that anything else I've ever felt in my entire life. There was nothing I could do about the pain, I just had to tolerate five minutes of torture," Nelson said. It didn't even compare the pain she experienced when she received treatments as a child for a burned leg. Like the game Operation, occasionally the nurse would hit the tender edges of the wound with her tweezers. Nelson had to stay in bed for three days then returned to find herself famous at school. Everyone wanted to know what had happened and see her wound to prove it. After the surgery all she could think about was going swimming, since she knew she wouldn't be able to go for a long time. "The worst was when I went to the French Riviera. It was so hot, like 300 degrees, and I couldn't swim," said Nelson. Once the term ended Nelson had plans to travel to other countries in Europe before going home. This was a problem because her wound needed to be cleaned everyday by her nurse. But by getting special permission Nelson was able to learn how to do it herself and finished her trip as planned. The experience made her feel like she could now do anything except be around a spider. "When I go rock climbing and there is a spider I'll just throw my hands off. I'll put my whole life in jeopardy because I don't want to touch the spider," Nelson said. The wound has completely healed but Nelson still has a scare resembling a bullet wound to prove her story. "I kept thinking nobody is going to believe this," said Adrienne Smith, Nelson's friend. "I am so glad I was there so I tell people it really happened." Smith was with Nelson during the doctor visit and the hospital. Nelson will start next semester as a senior and hopes to graduate next spring with a degree in social studies.
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