Brown Recluse Spider Bite Almost Costs College Student Nikki Perez Her Eyesight

Brown Recluse Spider (Loxosceles reclusa)

A brown recluse spider bite nearly cost a 21-year-old student in the U.S. her eyesight.

Nikki Perez, a student at Texas Christian University, spent days in the hospital after she was bitten by a brown recluse spider in September. She described how she lost part of an ear and nearly her eye sight to the venomous arachnid.

"It was terrifying," she told Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.

Perez was waiting at the Amarillo airport with her boyfriend Eric and his mom, when she suddenly felt a sharp sting on the back of her neck.

"I felt a nasty pinch when I touched my neck," she said. "Next, I felt something crawling over my face and over my eye. I yelled for Eric to help me, and when he saw the spider crawling over my face, he swatted it to the floor, and stamped on it."

She then wrapped the organism, which had a violin-shaped mark on its back, up in tissues and put it in her handbag to show doctors.

Doctors couldn't do much for Perez, whose neck had started to burn, until she showed signs of necrosis, or dying skin cells.

"They gave me some steroids and told me to keep an eye on it, but as soon as I got in the car, I could feel that my entire head was starting to swell up," she said.

She took photos of herself as the affected area grew and took over a larger portion of her ear.

"Then it started spreading to my other eye," she told the Daily Mail. "I was going blind…it was terrifying. It was spreading all over my head, which actually felt like a bit of a relief as the pain was so concentrated behind my ear."

She was then admitted to a hospital for 5 days, hooked up in IV drips and given vital steroids.

She wore a helmet and a protective headband when she was discharged --she had them for three weeks after that. She needed a skin graft to repair the part of her ear that showed signs of necrosis.

The Daily Mail report added that brown recluse spiders are spreading due to global warming. It cited a research that predicts the spiders could move further north toward portions of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and even New York by 2020.

Check out below a Huffington Post report about Perez' case: