The bite of an Australian Red Back spider won't usually kill you but the unbearable, sickening pain will often last for hours. Most victims will remember briefly noticing a tiny, shiny bead-like black spider vanishing moments before the pain set in. They drop off postal sacks; they run over suitcases; they hang, suspended behind television sets. It's characteristic vivid post-box red back - stripe on a small, glossy body is the only warning you will get. The bite may simply make you feel a little unwell for half an hour and leave a terribly itchy, sometimes lightly blistered patch on the site. If it is unusually large, you may experience an overwhelming urge to just lie down and die. Relentless, unforgiving pain, slight nausea, a slight sweat and a high pulse are common symptoms. If the pain does not settle within an hour, you may face hours of agony at the site of the bite.
Most rural nursing posts and hospitals keep Red-Back anti-venom. A doctor familiar with the symptoms can insert an intravenous bung and have an infusion of anti-venom running fairly quickly. The pain and any symptoms usually settle rapidly. In cases that I have seen, the pain has almost settled by the time the small infusion has completed and this can only be compared to heaven if you have suffered up to eight hours of agony from a previous bite.
One of my patients told me of how he had been discharged from a hospital following a bite from an unfamiliarly large Red Back while working up North. Six hours after the event, he experienced ascending (slowly travelling up from the place of the bite to his respiratory muscles) paralysis and made a brush with death when he was unable to breath. Getting back to an emergency centre at the onset of the secondary set of symptoms can account for his survival.
Red Backs love quiet spots like shed roof corners but they get inside homes and fence crevices and really, if you think about it…they don't have ethics or a conscience, so if they are there, there is always a danger of being bitten by this beautiful, deadly little thing. If you are small enough and it is mature enough...remember....death is it's only intention.
