[Niamh.]

-scared-

'I was unconscious, got the shakes, and started frothing at the mouth'
Eugene Murphy tells of near-death encounter when he was bitten by spider in Dublin

Eugene Murphy (28) spent 24 hours in intensive care and had to be injected twice with adrenalin after going into cardiac arrest last Saturday.

The Dublin man, who runs an engineering company, was bitten three times in ten minutes by the venomous spider – in the side and the shoulder.

Eugene told Independent.ie how he was sitting on his parents’ couch with his four year-old son Eoin when he felt a pain that was “ten times worse than a bone break”.

“I came back from work, sat down on the couch and felt a bite on my side and then a bite on my shoulder.”

“I witnessed the thing literally getting stuck in, and I actually had to tug it away from me to get it out. The fangs were embedded underneath the skin. A lump of skin came off with it when I took it out.”

“I wouldn’t have thought twice about the two earlier bites, but with the third bite he was really getting stuck in. He was bopping up and down, literally like a bull in a field. That’s the only way I’d describe it.”



“It was proper fire on my shoulder. It was ten times worse than any bone break. He was kicking well anyway.”

Luckily, Eugene’s father was in the room at the time and he immediately called emergency services when his son collapsed to the floor.

“I remember my throat shutting and my eyes going. I banged my head on the ground and my eyes were going, and then I was out.”

“My Dad and my brother were there, and they saw me going into the shakes and frothing at the mouth. They were keeping my tongue out and making sure that I was safe, and my Dad actually gave me mouth-to-mouth.”

“I remember waking up with the fire brigade. They brought me out to the ambulance, but I don’t remember that, and they gave me adrenaline.”

“The next day, a guy from the fire brigade came in to visit me and he said ‘I thought you were a goner’.”

“The agony of it. They put morphine in me, and the adrenaline twice, and still with the pain of it apparently I was roaring the place down. They put straps on me to hold me down but I broke one of the straps.”

“All of Sunday, I don’t really remember it, but I was jumping around the place with the pain.”

The false widow spider was an inch in diameter, very small in size and was black with white spots.

Eugene said he believes he carried it home from work, and wouldn’t have thought twice if he’d spotted it before it bit him because of its small size.

“I’d usually be the one slagging people off for being afraid of spiders,” he said.

“I brought it home from work, I’d say. I think it came from the van. We do a lot of work around the water meters and utilities, and those places carry a lot of spiders.”

“If it got the young lad [his son], they wouldn’t have survived. They were gone.”

The businessman, who is six-feet tall and well built, was told by medical staff in Tallaght Hospital that his level of fitness helped him to survive.

Doctors from around the hospital came to see the bites after Eugene had recovered, and they nicknamed him "Spidey" and "Spiderman".

“The dietician told me that if I hadn’t been fit, I would have been goosed. The adrenaline kept me going luckily. I’m blessed to be honest.”

“I have to keep an eye on the heart because the heart goes irregular for a while when this happens. I’ll have a check-up in a couple of month’s time.”

“I feel grand now. I’ve been told that I’ll feel a bit woozy with the adrenalin still running through my system.”

"The doctors were calling me Spidey and Spiderman," he laughed.

Mr Murphy said awareness through word of mouth might save someone else’s life. He plans to buy epipens for the 30 workers at his company Muscrai Engineering Ltd.

“People don’t know what they look like. People tell you about a wasp, but they don’t tell you about this. Keep the kids away from them - that's the realistic thing of it."
- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news....ITXwsI8V.dpuf

[Sophiee]

this is awful .

[Niamh.]

We're all going to die

[andybigbro]

I don't like this

[LukeB]

omg

[Vanessa]

[michael21]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

We're all going to die

i like the way you thought we were all going to live for ever

[LeatherTrumpet]

they are here and they are coming to get you

and they are angry

[Marsh.]

“I witnessed the thing literally getting stuck in, and I actually had to tug it away from me to get it out. The fangs were embedded underneath the skin. A lump of skin came off with it when I took it out.”

[Livia]

Stop it now, it's all getting too silly.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Stop it now, it's all getting too silly.

Kill them Liv, kill them all!!!!!

[LeatherTrumpet]

Experts have concluded that the milder winters and year on year, record breaking hot summers in the UK are keeping more of the spiders alive. It used to be only a handful of spiders that would survive the cold weather so the numbers were always kept down. But now they are all surviving the winter and are crawling out of hibernation earlier to mate. The result has been numbers have just rocketed into the hundreds of thousands. The species - only the female of which bites - had been considered native to Devon and Dorset but has spread as far as East Anglia. Recent reports of bites by BT members are in Canvey Island Essex. The spider usually lives on walls, fences and tree bark.

It may be no bigger than a pea, but its bite can put a grown man in hospital. The "False Black Widow Spider" species, officially called steatoda nobilis, originally came from the Canary and Madeira Islands over a 100 years ago probably in a cargo of bananas. The species had kept a low profile since arriving and it's been established in Devon for a long time but in recent years has been rapidly spreading along the south coast and up the to east of England and is likely to spread northwards in years to come according to insect experts at the Natural History Museum.



http://www.unionsafety.eu/docs/HSNew...gRepeated.html

[Marsh.]

....but has spread as far as East Anglia.

Thank god. They've gone abroad. Phew....

[LeatherTrumpet]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Thank god. They've gone abroad. Phew....

[Scarlett.]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

they are here and they are coming to get you

and they are angry

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Thank god. They've gone abroad. Phew....

LOL... I see what you did there.

I like spiders. This whole thing is going to make people think less about squashing them and then we're going to find outselves overrun with other insects, flies, mozzies... we should look after our spiders.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

LOL... I see what you did there.

I like spiders. This whole thing is going to make people think less about squashing them and then we're going to find outselves overrun with other insects, flies, mozzies... we should look after our spiders.

Tell that to Eugene Murphy

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Tell that to Eugene Murphy

Some people are more sensitive to stuff, wasp and bee stings, peanuts... and in his case, the nip of a spider. All that "The fangs were embedded underneath the skin. A lump of skin came off with it when I took it out...", gimme a break!

Eugene Murphy is like the Witchfinder General of spiders

[LeatherTrumpet]

I have spiders all over my gaff and I feed them. You should see the ones in my fleet of garden offices - like dinner plates


I feed them too

[Livia]

Yeah, I've got some monsters in the garage... but I don't feed them.

You're a sick, sick man, Trumpet.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Some people are more sensitive to stuff, wasp and bee stings, peanuts... and in his case, the nip of a spider. All that "The fangs were embedded underneath the skin. A lump of skin came off with it when I took it out...", gimme a break!

Eugene Murphy is like the Witchfinder General of spiders

nip of spider hhhmmm the horrible bastard almost killed him and he said he's not allergic, I heard him interviewed on the radio this morning

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

I have spiders all over my gaff and I feed them. You should see the ones in my fleet of garden offices - like dinner plates


I feed them too

My cat eats spiders, I love that cat :')

[LeatherTrumpet]

Originally Posted by Livia

Yeah, I've got some monsters in the garage... but I don't feed them.

You're a sick, sick man, Trumpet.

catch a daddy long legs and you have like 3 minutes of gladiatorial fun as it hits the web

[Jamesy]

I've got a few of these spiders in my garage, had one on my car wing mirror earlier in the year too.

I just avoid them like the plague!

[Natalie.]