It's the second time I've been bitten by a black widow. The first time I was bitten on my arm. This time, it's on my back. When I first began experiencing the pain, I had just taken a bath and I thought, wow, this is the worst gas pain and why is it focused on my back, below my shoulderblade? And I thought gas first because gas pain is weird and I was burping like I'd just had a soda. 

So I took some antacid and hoped I'd feel better soon. Nope. And as I tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in, the pain got worse. It was worse when I took a breath. Every time. Blood clot in the lung? Not impossible. It happened to a friend of mine. But the pain moved. And then it started traveling up to spasm in my neck.

Heart attack, I thought, but everything felt steady, and despite the pain, it hung around my right side. Also, I was starting to get back spasms. Aha! I thought. I have a rib that's not positioned great. Maybe I did something to irritate it. I normally feel it in the front. But maybe it's irritated in the back. The fact that it would get worse when I took in a breath seemed to support this idea. 

Of course I wasn't feeling it up against my spine. 

Maybe it's just low back pain, I thought to myself. I've been typing in bed a lot. Not a great idea. And now I was paying the price. The breathing thing was weird, but whatever.

I probably should have woken up my husband at this point, but I wasn't convinced anything other than back strain was going on. So I finally dozed off for an hour here, an hour there, and got through to morning. My husband agreed yeah, probably back pain, and brought me things, and was supportive. The pain came in waves. So weird.

I emerged from bed in the afternoon and sat a while, watching tv with him. "Hey, it's really bad right now. Would you mind rubbing my back gently to see if you can calm those muscles down?"

I love my husband. He doesn't always when he rubs my back, but he lifted my shirt.

"Hey," he said. "This looks like some sort of bite. And there's a rash."

It all came to me at once. The spasms, the shooting pains going up into my neck, the cramps, the gassy feeling in my gut. Black. Widow. Spider. Bite.

The call to an advice nurse was fine. The emergency room, not great. Bad, actually. I got checked in super fast, they did blood work, raised eyebrows at my blood pressure (another gift from the spidery widow--high blood pressure) and called me back to give me a room. The wait in the room was super long. Hours. Turns out they'd sort of lost me. And the doctor--I really liked her as a person. She was kind. But she was not hearing me, and not explaining things well, and I think she may have actually fallen asleep on shift and wasn't entirely with the program. She should have talked to me about antivenin. I probably wouldn't have taken it, as my blood pressure was already coming down, but I qualified with my bp and pain levels and muscle spasms, etc.

Anyway, I'm better now, four days later. I'm still affected. Random spasms. Got a rash on my neck a few minutes ago, randomly. I can take full breaths without setting off a pain/cramp reaction, but yawning is still dicey. So is coughing and sneezing.

All this to say, if you're cleaning out a little-used area, it doesn't matter if you can't see them, and they might not bite you then and there. No, once they're disturbed, they leave their dark corners and wander around your house, or they might hitch a ride on your clothes after you've been messing around a wood pile, an old stump, or a pile of rocks, and end up someplace indoors. A place you use. A place where they want to be left alone, but unfortunately it's not as ideal as the place they used to be, so they're less protected. And they're cranky.

And they'll bite you. You might never see them before, during, or after the bite. But that bite stays with you a long time.

Stay safe out there!