A holidaymaker has described how his leg “resembled something from a horror film” after he was bitten by a venomous spider.
Jonathon Hogg, a keen footballer and kickboxer, has required three operations and a skin graft since the brown recluse spider attacked.
Within hours, the venom began to eat away at the 40-year-old’s flesh – doctors say he could have lost his leg had it been left untreated.
Mr Hogg, from north London, said: “The pain was like nothing I’ve been through in my life. By the time I got to hospital my leg was bursting open, there was pus, it was black.”
The barrister believes he was bitten while travelling on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to South Africa, and the airline says it is currently looking into the incident.
He added: “I was struggling to get comfortable during the journey and crossed my legs to get into a better position when I felt a small, sharp pain radiating in my left leg.
“I turned on the light and clearly saw a spider running across the floor before hearing two stewardesses screaming ‘Spider’, but I wasn’t sure if I had been bitten as it really wasn’t painful.”
When Mr Hogg’s leg first swelled up and became bruised, he took painkillers and mistook it for deep-vein thrombosis.
But the pain got worse a day later and his friends urged him to see a doctor, thinking it looked like a spider bite.
He had taken five months off work for a once-in-a-lifetime holiday and the ordeal began shortly after he finished volunteering at an orangutan sanctuary in Borneo.
He was travelling on to South Africa so he could dive with sharks.
Mr Hogg is now taking legal action against the airline, and alleges it had refused to take responsibility.
(via Sky News)
