‘As if it was burning my flesh’: This man almost needed his arm amputated after being bitten by a spider

Patrice Genet is a sixty-year-old from the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in the north-east of France. Recently, he got quite a nasty surprise after he was bitten by a spider on the night of 1st June 2020.

Although being bitten by a spider isn’t a nice experience at the best of times, this story gets even worse because this particular critter turned out to be a very dangerous, poisonous spider known as a recluse.

As the French newspaper Est Republicain reported, Patrice Genet’s experience was quite harrowing:

When I woke up, the pain was almost unbearable. As if it was burning my flesh.

This pain obviously started to worry both him and his wife Brigitte, so he decided to go see a doctor and quickly ended up in the emergency department surrounded by some very concerned professionals. Patrice’s hand and arm were swelling up and were already exhibiting signs of necrosis.

As the man explained to the newspaper:

Its venom is so powerful that it can attack muscles, kidneys and is even found in blood tests.

Leaning towards amputation

The medical team cleaned the wound, gave him antibiotics as well as painkillers but nothing helped. So much so that the necrosis ended up spreading all over his arm and his doctors thought that Patrice may have to have it amputated.

According to the newspaper who recounted this dark story, Patrice needed to have a total of four operations in one month. But that’s not all, the sixty-year-old’s experience gets worse. The man also had to have a transplant to compensate for the necrosis that had developed on his left hand. For this transplant flesh was taken from his abdomen and grafted onto his hand.

Fortunately, even after all this, Patrice was still able to retain the motor skills in his left hand.

If you have a strong stomach, check out the photos of Patrice’s hand above.