After she kept hearing a noise that wouldn’t go away, Susie Torres decided it was time to go to the doctor.
Torres was simply thinking that she had water in her ear, but surely water would have come out at that point.
When she went to the doctor, the doctor, “ran out and said I’m going to get a couple more people. She then said, ‘I think you have an insect in there.'”
Torres said that she didn’t know exactly what was in her ear at that point so she wasn’t panicking. It’s probably a good thing she didn’t know yet because if you’d told me that there was a venomous spider in my ear, I would have freaked out.
According to KSHB,
Doctors later told her it was a highly venomous brown recluse spider.
Luckily, after a checkup, doctors told her the spider did not bite her.
“I never thought they would crawl in your ear or any part of your body,” Torres said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a bite from a brown recluse can cause itching, muscle pain, increased sweating, headaches, nausea and/or a fever. The CDC suggests treatment by a medical professional for any brown recluse bite.
Torres does not know where the spider came from, but said she will now take a few precautions, including before she goes to bed.
“I went and put some cotton balls in my ear last night, because I did not have any ear plugs,” said Torres. “I’m pretty terrified of spiders.”
Poison Control makes mention that the venom from a brown recluse spider can cause necrosis:
Over the course of a few days, the venom destroys the surrounding tissues. The wound gets larger, more painful, and darker in color. Necrosis or tissue death is identified when the tissue becomes black in color and forms a crust that eventually falls off. The venom can penetrate deeper in the tissues, sometimes affecting the fat and muscles. Often, the bite of a brown recluse spider leaves a crater-like scar after it has healed completely.