THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406100192
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Tony Stein
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
``My ankle started to itch, and I scratched it with my cane,'' Serene says. ``Scratched it and forgot it.''
{REST} But that itch turned into something the Wests will never forget, something that almost killed Serene. She had been bitten by a brown recluse spider and its venom was beginning a vicious attack on her body.
``I felt draggy Sunday afternoon,'' she says. ``As night wore on, she kept getting weaker and weaker,'' Richard says. ``She had to go back to using her walker, and finally I had to help her move her feet.''
By 3 a.m. that night, Serene could only respond to Richard's anxious questions with grunts and slight head movements. That's when Richard called an ambulance to take her to the emergency room at Chesapeake General Hospital.
Her temperature was 104 when she reached the hospital, and she was put in an ice blanket to lower it, Richard says. There was a place on her ankle that was turning purple and red and beginning to swell into a knot that Richard remembers as being almost baseball-size.
Then Serene went into toxic shock. Her body systems started shutting down. She was in the intensive care unit with five tubes pumping medication into her. ``Your wife is gravely ill,'' a doctor told Richard.
By Tuesday morning, her kidneys had shut down, and she had been put on life support. Her body was grossly swollen. ``There's not a great deal of hope,'' the doctors said. But they also said that if she made it through the night, there would be a chance.
She did, and she made it through another critical 72-hour stretch. She had won her fight. ``But I only know what they tell me,'' she says. ``I wasn't aware of any of it, thank goodness.''
Now, eight months later, she is still in recovery. She spent a total of 11 weeks in the hospital, seven weeks the first time and then back to deal with recurrent infections. The Wests have two bags stored in a closet. One is stuffed with get-well cards she received. The other, Richard says, holds 7 pounds of medical bills. Fortunately, insurance covered them well.
Richard has another souvenir that's at the heart of this story. Before Serene's attack, he had read a newspaper article about the bite of a brown recluse spider. What he read, the symptoms Serene had and the suddenness of her illness convinced him the bite was the cause. Without having seen it happen, the doctors couldn't say for sure, but Richard says there was no disagreement with the probability of a bite.
The clincher for him came about a week after Serene went to the hospital. ``I found a brown recluse spider in the garage and killed it with Black Flag,'' he says. He keeps its remains in an old pill bottle, a grim souvenir of a grim time.
Looking back, the Wests say they have a lot of people to thank. There were the paramedics who treated her first and the medical staff at Chesapeake General Hospital. And Richard says there were so many people who offered prayers. ``The doctors took care of the medical side, and a lot of good folks took care of the spiritual side,'' he says.
For her part, Serene talks about the outpouring of loving care she felt. ``Richard was there every time I opened my eyes,'' she says.
If her body remains wobbly, her mind is geared up again to the writing of inspirational books. She has had two published, ``Very Practical Meditation'' and ``Healing Feelings, Thoughts and Memories.'' The nurses on her floor posted one of her poems on the wall. It's called ``Laughter:''
Laughter is a melody, a concert from the heart,
A tickling by the angels - creative living art.
Laughter heals and comforts. It's sometimes gentle,
Sometimes bold.
Laughter is a freeing dance performed within the soul.
Philosophical by nature, Serene takes a philosophical view of what has happened to her. ``There is always something good out of every experience,'' she says. ``I have learned to be more patient.'' Then she pauses, adding solemnly ``I have been spared for something, and I will do what I can for the world by loving as much as I can and not holding resentments.''
She gets up to walk across her living room and sways a bit. ``She still bows with the wind,'' Richard says with a smile.
``Yes,'' Serene says, ``but I'm just happy to be walking at all.''
by CNB