You don’t have to be an arachnophobic to feel utterly unsettled by a rural Texas woman’s story whose frightening rash turned out to be everyone’s worst nightmare. In a series of viral TikTok videos, Sarah Neal revealed a mysterious, full-body flare-up that took several days and multiple doctors to figure out. The verdict: Neal’s horrific rash was the result of a middle-of-the-night bite from a creepy-crawly visitor.
In an interview with People, Neal recounted being awakened around 2 a.m. by what felt like something crawling on her. She soon realized that it had bitten her left buttock, though the reaction did not appear until later that evening when she was out at the movies with her husband. “I told him, ‘Hey, my arms and legs are starting to get a rash,’” she recalled to People. “I looked in the mirror, and my face was bright red and hot to the touch.”
I swear I’m prettier than this
A trip to the ER followed the next morning, after Neal had developed a fever and pustules began to emerge from the rash scattered across her body. Doctors at the hospital thought the rash wasn’t a spider bite, instead theorizing that it was a reaction to sunscreen and lake water. (“I had borrowed [sunscreen] spray from a lifeguard and sprayed it all over my face before jumping in a lake,” said Neal.) After being given steroids and prescribed antibiotics, she was sent home, at which point her mother pushed her to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist. “I ended up finding someone who could see me the same day, which people on TikTok told me is almost impossible,” she said.
Once Neal shared her story with the dermatologist, they diagnosed her pustule-filled skin as an Acute Generalized Exanthematous Pustulosis (AGEP) rash, commonly caused by antibiotic use. However, after consulting a medical textbook, the dermatologist revealed that, in certain rare cases resembling Neal’s, the reaction could have been the result of a brown recluse spider bite.
The rash began to clear after five days of steroid usage and ultimately confirmed the reaction to be from the bite as the bite area, Neal says, “turned black and hard.” However, after a few days, the bite began to worsen.
Before a trip to Montana, Neal returned to another dermatologist, who gave her yet another dose of alarming news. The second dermatologist reiterated just how rare AGP rashes caused by a recluse spider bite are. “She told me the necrotic tissue was growing and that I probably shouldn’t go on my trip to Montana,” Neal recalled. “I had antibiotics and was trying to wait it out, but I also really didn’t want to cancel the trip.”
LIFE IS GOOD !!!!
Another trip to the ER cleared her to travel, but Neal still had another two weeks of recovery before the pain started to ease. At long last, she was able to heal and reflect on her experience. “I think it’s so important for doctors to stay up to date on rare reactions,” Neal said. “I’m glad there were records of this happening before, or I don’t know if anyone would’ve believed me.”
Whether you were already afraid of spiders before reading this or you prided yourself on being relatively unshakeable, Neal’s cautionary tale hopefully will make you think twice before entering a cobweb-filled basement.
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