Virginia Woman Hospitalized After Experiencing Hallucinations From Venomous Spider Bite On Her Lip

Virginia Woman Hospitalized For Brown Recluse Spider Bite After Kayaking Down Staunton River

A Virginia woman was recently hospitalized after she started experiencing hallucinations when she was bitten on the lip by a brown recluse spider.

Sherri Maddox,50, said she was on a kayaking trip down the Staunton River when the venomous spider had bitten her.

However, she didn’t feel anything until the following day when the bite felt very painful and caused her lip to swell up massively. After she was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment, Maddox said she started experiencing hallucinations and thought she was relaxing at home during that time.

“[I] thought it was because of the pain meds they gave me, but I heard from several different people that that’s what the spider venom does. I just thought I was at my mom’s house or my sister’s house and then I’d get out and go look out the hospital room and realized I was in the hospital,” she explained to WAVY.

Maddox added that she was fearful about her diagnosis due to the stories she read on the internet about the spider and had concerns due to the bite’s deadly reputation.

“I was just praying I wasn’t going to die because I hear horror stories and you look on the internet and see all this stuff.”

Thankfully, Maddox is on antibiotics and the swelling went down after receiving the treatment.