A holiday-maker retuned from his travels with an experience to remember – after medics pulled a tropical spider out of his body.
Dylan Thomas was visiting Bali when he noticed a mysterious red trail stretching two inches from his belly towards his left nipple.
“It was like someone had scratched me with a knife,” he told NT News.
When the angry red line grew even longer, he consulted a doctor who advised it was simply an insect bite and gave him some anti-histamine cream.
But within hours angry, painful blisters erupted along the red line, sending him back to hospital where a dermatologist determined a tropical spider had burrowed into the 21-year-old’s body presumably via a recent appendix scar.
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From there, the arachnid “a bit bigger than the size of a match head” had diligently burrowed its way up to his sternum.
The spider, which was mercifully dead when it was removed with tweezers, is currently being identified and naturally, Thomas has acquired the new nickname ‘Spider Man’.
Thomas, from Bunbury in Australia, told the Bunbury Mail: “It wasn’t really a tickling sensation, obviously once the venom started to affect my skin it was a really burning sensation like a searing feeling.”
Writing on Facebook he said: “Well that’s escalated… Spider man is well and truly going to stick as a nickname here.
“… After running tests and putting things inside my stomach they finally found out it was a tropical spider that’s been living inside of me for the last three days, managed to get it out luckily.
“Haven’t felt so violated in my life before! Just glad it’s all over.”
Thomas is now hoping his friends will chip in to pay for a Spider Man tattoo to cover up his scar.