Stay Safe While Working Outdoors: My White Tail Spider Bite Story
(Disclaimer: This story shares my personal experience only and is not medical advice. Always consult a healthcare professional for diagnosis or treatment.)
After a day of gardening as I was getting ready for bed I took off my shirt and to my horror there was a red angry weeping wound on my forearm the size of a 20 cent piece. I didn’t feel a thing until I saw it. The dreaded white tail bite. These things only happen to other people I read about in the newspaper, not me and I am a tad freaked at this point. I had only been gardening for 3 hours and already the bite was this size. I'm an electrician by trade and the last thing I want is something eating my forearm away. I need strong hands to feed my family. My nephew still has a hole in his ankle from a white tail bite 10 years ago, I immediately recalled his 18 month battle. I have read of people losing arms and legs from spider bites because the infection won’t go away. The problem is, from what I’ve learned, spider bites can sometimes act differently from typical infections. In my experience, the bite caused the skin around it to become damaged quickly, which is why early care matters.
Standard treatment is, go to the doctor, they give you a big dose of antibiotics and send you home to watch the wound grow. The problem with many bites, stings, splinters and pricks is not the living things injected. Living things CAN be killed with antibiotics.
What if what the spider injects is already dead and it simply kills every living thing it touches? Like a zombie, what is dead can’t be killed and wherever the dead touch, death follows, so the wound multiplies unopposed while we destroy our immune system in the belief we will heal.
Reading about life before antibiotics, poultices were commonly used to treat wounds. What does a poultice do? It draws out poisons, necrotics, spikes, splinters and infections.
Remembering an Old Favourite
In a past life I fixed dishwashers. Every warranty customer seemed to delight in filling the dishwasher with warm water and washed off food then letting it brew for 3 or 4 days until I got there. They weren’t paying so why be nice? By the time I arrive the water is alive and bubbling. Dishwashers are marvelous things but going where the user doesn’t in order to fix, there isn’t much consideration for the fixer with razor sharp edges on the stainless steel joins inside. As you have probably worked out, yes I would cut or scratch myself and then need to put my hands into this lovely brew of bacteria while getting things working. Any break in the skin surface of my hands became infected and throbbing within hours causing me great distress unless I used this stuff called Magnaplasm.
I knew it as Magnaplasm back when I was good looking, or Magnesium Sulphate. I bought a tiny tub 1” high and 1” round when I was in my 20’s and it lasted me for 30 years until I lost it. Saved me many doctor's visits and I felt lost without it.
Out of the blue, my girl comes home with a tube of Magnaplasm Splintex - New product, same stuff. Funnily enough about 2 weeks before my bite. By the way, I LOVE that girl. She seems to pop up with what I need just before I need it.
What I Did
Put a small squirt onto a bandaid, put it over any wound and go to sleep. When you wake up, remove the bandaid and be amazed at what is stuck to it and also how the angry red has gone and been replaced by healthy pink. Splintex removes anything that shouldn’t be in the wound. Pulls all kinds of splinters, prickles, goobies, and dead stuff from spider bites. I didn't take a photo of the wound when fresh, I was kinda otherwise occupied but here is a photo of my white tail spider bite after using splintex for 4 days changing the bandaid twice daily.
(Photo: My white tail spider bite after using Splintex for four days — viewer discretion advised.)
The bandaid marks are still visible on my arm. I continued for 7 days. There wasn’t much point after that, there was nothing left that needed healing.
Disclaimer:
This image is my personal experience and is shared for informational purposes only. It is not a medical recommendation or a substitute for professional healthcare. Viewer discretion is advised.
I didn’t really appreciate the significance of this outcome because this is consistently the healing results I have had from 30 years of using Magnaplasm until I talked to others who had similar bites but definitely not the same healing results.
The big MUST DO is you must get the splintex onto the wound as quickly as possible because the body reacts and starts closing up very quickly. Once healing starts the goobies get locked in here they can keep doing their mischief. My battle scar today. Barely visible.
The bite has healed up nicely — just a faint trace remains.
I am not saying don’t go to a doctor but a lot of my customers are in remote locations where a doctor is sometimes 2 hours away and the chemists are not open till tomorrow. Use the splintex as first aid until help is available and remember the golden rule about snakebite. DO NOT MOVE!!. Snake bite poisons travel via the lymph system and the lymph system is pumped by movement. ANY movement will pump the poison closer to your heart.
Something you might not be aware of…
Even if your phone doesn’t connect, carry it with you when working alone. If you call the emergency number the phone will attempt until self-destruction to connect you with help by progressively ramping up transmission power and swapping between frequencies until it connects.
As you can imagine, I have written this article to remind you of one of the great features of our remote control mowers. Stand well back in safety like a boss and send the worker in to get bitten, scratched and stung.
I hope this information helps save someone from a lot of pain someday. Actually no, that is a pretty lousy wish, I hope no one ever needs my tip because no one gets bitten but in the words of that famous song, “... This Is Australia”. I’ve been using Magnaplasm for many years, keeping it in my glovebox as an essential part of my first aid kit. Its ability to support healing is remarkable, and it has become a trusted companion in my personal first aid routine.
Enough! Thank you for reading and have a great day.
Regards Phil
PS: The manufacturers of Splintex have no idea I have written this blog and any claims made on these pages are my personal experiences and results and are in no way agreed with, endorsed or approved by the good people at Magnaplasm. Phil.
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