Arachnophobia: The Difference between scared and good reason!
All my life I had been ridiculed for being a guy who is deathly afraid of spiders. The stereotype is supposed to be, girls afraid of spiders while the guy kills them. Not trying to be sexist, but just pointing out what the typical stereotype is. However that is not the case with me. Unlike most people I have a legit reason to be afraid of them. It all goes back, to when I was a kid, back in the 90's.
Back in the day, yes I used it, when I was 10 years old, is when everything changed. I used to love bugs, just like any typical kid. Any spider or weird looking bug intrigued me. They were straight out of a horror film, slimy bugs, creepy legs. It was fascinating for me. Watching the creeping bugs waltz along the leaves just as green as a well done lawn. The 8 legs of the queen of night crawling around looking for the days meal. I would pick them up, play with them, put them in jars, just as much as any kid growing up would.
One day the family went to our "Up North" cabin, which is where my legal address is now and where I went to school. Yet another story for another day. Up in Deford, a small community near Cass City, the woods are thick, the sand is warm, and the grass never softer between the toes. Mid summer time begins, the perfect timing for family vacations, and just plain fun! It is also the best time for vicious bugs to come out and play as well.
It was time for us to have fun, after a morning of showers, cleaning the house, helping my grandmother with other various tasks. My grandfather pulled out the Quad, or "Four-wheeler", all red and ready to roll. My 10 year old eyes widened as big as the moon. filled with excitement me, my grandfather and my cousin raced to the back 10 acres of the Property. After we went through the woods out the other end of the green tunnel, came endless fields, and best of all, the mountain of warm sand! My cousin took his turn going through the forest of weeds, tall and thick, having the time of his life as I was playing in the warm sand waiting my turn.
This was mid August, the temperature was around 90 degrees, sticky heat went through the air. However even though as a kid, bare feet shorts and no shirt seemed ideal, riding Quads required a lot more protection than that. Long sleeved shirt, long jeans, kid boots. Ever since that day I broke my collar bone my grandparents wanted me to be safe. Thinking everything was fine, my turn came on the Quad. Excitement overcame me and all I could think about was having fun going as fast as I could, going as high as I could on a jump, and taking the turn as tight as possible!
A good fifteen minutes went past as I took the ATV through a forest of weeds. As I came out of the thicket and onto the main path the fun came to an abrupt hault! Pain! Stabbing! A Stun grenade just went off in front of me! Nothing mattered, everything went to black in a quick flash. Yet somehow the curb up ahead turned my quad so no harm would come to me. All went silent. The Quad's engine roaring went dead silent, the birds singing their songs of the day went dead quiet, The sun shining ever so bright went dim as night. The sweat falling in my mouth ever so salty just vanished. My leg in such pain everything went numb. Right before I had the quad on full throttle, then it struck, both hands off the steering bar to clutch my leg as hard as I could, all hands were off the throttle and the brake! The quad was now drifting un-controllable with me on its back, screaming at the top of my lungs. My sprinted a marathon toward me and the bike as it was cruising toward the trees unknowing of certain doom. A Man of seventy years old never have I seen as much athletic abilities as he had that day. He caught the Quad and jumped on it mid transit, and immediately applied the break stopping the beast it was..
Yelling, screaming, unable to utter a word, clutching my leg with a death grip my grandfather was unable to figure out what was wrong. Unable to get me off the Quad my body was as stiff as the trees, he grabbed the handle bars and speed off into the woods to head to the cabin leaving my cousin behind. As soon as the roaring beast carrying us hit the drive way my grandfather, in poor English, yelled at the top of his longs "Maria get out here, jizza needza helpa" My grandmother ran out the house, found me clutching my legs and managed to get me off the four-wheeler. Setting me on the floor my grandfather knew nothing good was going to come of this. He hoped on the quad and raced off into the back to pick up my forgotten cousin.
Ripping off my pants as fast as she could she found the culprit. A massive hole in my leg oozing liquid of all sorts of colors. Calling 9-1-1 this far out really isn't a good idea since the nearest ambulance is usually fifteen miles out. One EMS unit covers two towns that are twenty miles appart, and the border of these towns are on the opposite direction than us. My grandfather came running back within a minute of leaving with my cousin, he hoped off jumped into the Cadillac, four-wheeler still running, house wide open, we raced to the hospital. At this point I had blacked out. The next thing I remember was being on the hospital bed with nurses trying to shove long endless metal needles in me. I had blacked out again.
Over the course of the next six months, I had to undergo weekly shots and weekly doctor visits. I had to sit at home with a massive Ice bag held to my leg to attempt to slow the poison. At one point the doctor told me I was days away from them having to amputate my leg. The poison came dangerously close to my major artery in my leg. If it had gotten to that point I would of been killed within a matter of minutes. right at the last minute my Leg, and my Life, was saved by pure determination. That was the worst year I had ever gone through in my life.
The Doctors took a sample of the venom that had done so much damage to my leg, and determined it was a common spider that to a regular person, would have been no more worse than a severe bee sting. However I was allergic to the venom. My body had gone through a severe allergic reaction to the spiders venom and that is what caused the massive damage, and the decaying tissue. To this day that tragic event still sticks in my head. I do not want to go through that again, thus I avoid spiders at all cost. I have a severe case of Arachnophobia because of the events, and as something as a simple house spider with no harmful effects to humans, I stay far away from.
Posts
