Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 3, 1994 TAG: 9405030140
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
She was ready for the interview that was about to take place: She had a pen and pad and wore a contagious smile.
You would never know that the quick-witted McHarg Elementary School first-grader had been terribly sick only a few weeks earlier - so sick that doctors performed a spinal tap to try to find out what was wrong.
Katie is on the mend now and says the worst thing about spending 14 days in the hospital was that her teacher brought homework for her to do.
But things were much more serious than that in mid-March when Tony and Wanda Shepheard found out that their daughter - shaking and running a temperature near 104 - had been bitten by a spider. Her symptoms later were diagnosed as having been caused by the potent venom of a brown recluse.
The Shepheards never found the spider that bit their daughter. They can only guess how and where Katie came in contact with it. One of Katie's doctors, Radford pediatrician Bill Cook, said the diagnosis was reached through the process of elimination.
"The symptoms were there, and there's no better alternative diagnosis," said Cook, who has been practicing in Radford since 1968 and said he can remember seeing only one other patient bitten by a brown recluse.
"We had never heard of a brown recluse before," said Tony Shepheard. "At first, I thought she had a real bad flu virus."
On the night of March 16, according to Wanda Shepheard, Katie awoke with a fever. She was throwing up frequently. The Shepheards noticed their daughter had what looked like two thumbprint-sized imprints just below her bellybutton.
"I thought she probably hit her stomach on the commode or burst a blood vessel when she was throwing up," Tony Shepheard said.
When Katie's temperature continued to climb, the Shepheards took her to their pediatrician's office. She was then rushed to the emergency room at Radford Community Hospital with a high blood count.
"She was so limp that she had no idea what was going on around her," her father said.
It was then that doctors told the Shepheards a spinal tap was necessary.
From that point, Katie's doctors began treating her for a brown recluse bite with intravenous antibiotics. She was in the hospital for six days. Both bites marks began turning black from venom having killed tissue; one formed a scab that dried up and fell off with treatment.
The other bite mark, however, was bigger and did not disappear, although Katie seemed to feel better. She was released from the hospital March 22.
Eight days later, she was sick again and back in the hospital. The larger bite mark was ulcerated. Surgery was scheduled, and the bite wound - almost a half-inch deep, was cut out of Katie's stomach.
To make sure the wound would heal completely, it was left open. Katie left the hospital again April 7.
Through the ordeal, the Shepheards have learned a lot about brown recluses. A friend at their church brought them a copy of last September's Reader's Digest, which includes an article about a Utah woman bitten by a brown recluse. The woman nearly lost her right arm to infection caused by the bite.
The brown recluse is also called a violin spider because it is elongated, has spindly legs and a tiny violin-shaped marking on the front segment of its body, according to the article. The spiders are usually no more than an eighth of an inch long. They are members of the Loxosceles genus, which has some of the most toxic venom in the United States.
Venom from the brown recluse's painless bite can destroy flesh and muscle. Once in the bloodstream, it can wreak havoc on the central nervous system and break down red blood cells, which can lead to liver or kidney failure.
The spider has a range from Kansas and Missouri to Texas and west to California, but the brown recluse has reached other states by accident.
Eric Day, who oversees the insect identification lab at Virginia Tech, said he has seen only two brown recluse spiders in eight years - both traced to furniture shipments from Texas. One of the spiders was found in Floyd County and the other in Williamsburg, he said.
"They're exceedingly rare [in Virginia]," Day said.
Samuel Zeakas, a professor of parasitology at Radford University, said the spiders can be controlled by spraying with the pesticides gamma benzene hexachloride or malathion.
The female brown recluse is more aggressive than the male. The spiders prefer dark, warm places such as woodpiles, inner bed coverings and dusty corners.
The world looks better to Katie now. When she was on the IV antibiotics, she said, "Everybody had two heads and three eyes."
The Shepheards have sprayed their home with pesticide. Wanda Shepheard says she now shakes garments, sheets and other things a lot more than she used to.
"If we see a spider around here, it doesn't stay around for long," she said.
by CNB