Jennifer Vicenti Dálvez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1983) had her life changed on what seemed like just another placid weekend afternoon that she will never forget. Last September 18, this Ibiza-based sports instructor was relaxing on the terrace of a friends’ house in Sant Joan when she felt the bite of an insect (she later learned it was a fiddler spider) that brought her terrible after-effects that she is still fighting against today.
Jennifer was with her friends’ dog and first thought that what had bitten her in the hamstring area (back of the thigh) was a flea. However, within 15 minutes the pain was unbearable: “It was like a burn.”
From Sant Joan he returned to Vila, where he lives. He managed, even with the pain, to doze off, but around midnight he woke up: “The pain was neuralgic, my back hurt, the nodes began to swell, not only in the groin but also in the rest of the body, I felt it in the armpits, in the mouth. The wound swelled up like a bubble and oozed“.
After talking to a medical friend, Jennifer went to the emergency room at Can Misses. As she told La Voz de Ibiza, they immediately recognized the sting of the loxosceles rufescens, also known as Mediterranean brown recluse spider, Mediterranean fiddler spider or corner spider, immediately.
The first thing Jennifer felt is the most characteristic: it feels more like a burn than an insect bite.
The risk is no small thing. Amputations of limbs and even death. This is how the Mexican government website describes it:“It can cause death because its poison dissolves tissues, causes cell death, contains powerful enzymes that destroy everything that has proteins and its effect is 10 times more powerful than a sulfuric acid burn”. For this reason, it is one of the most poisonous in Spain.
The consequences of a fiddler spider bite
Jennifer then began a long course of antibiotics. The pain was intolerable: “I had to go every other day to have painkillers injected”.
The painkillers were so strong that he spent most of the first few weeks sleeping. Anyway, he could barely stand, much less work: “I couldn’t even walk.”
His lower back suffered, due to the spider’s venom, a muscle rupture and, as a result, a hernia.
In addition to medical treatment, she supplemented mainly with Immunocal, centella asiatica and vitamins.
Today he still hasn’t recovered: “I have a significant restriction of movement. When I use my hip, my sciatica hurts and I have a lot of sensitivity in the lumbar and dorsal area”.
However, it can be said that he has been a lucky case: “I have been very lucky. I’ve heard of people who have lost fingers and I haven’t had to have anything amputated”.
In fact, a 19-year-old Welsh tourist vacationing in Ibiza in 2021 actually suffered the loss of two fingers on one hand after being bitten by the fiddler spider.
