It was October 2012 when a group of us were watching the football at my mate James’s house in London. During the second half, I decided to help myself to a banana from the fruit bowl. I felt a pinch and then my left hand became stiff. I showed my friends the bizarre black dot with a white ring around it on my hand; no one knew what to make of it. I started feeling peaky, so headed back to my flat in a cab. As soon as I got in, I felt as if I had flu, and went to bed. My housemate Travis was in our flat watching a film in his room when I started having a fever dream and began screaming. He heard me through the wall, but assumed I’d stop soon, so put on his headphones and watched the entire film.

When he pulled off his headphones during the end credits, he could still hear me shrieking and decided to check on me. Not receiving any response to his knocking, he kicked down my locked door. There he found me white, sweating, screeching, clasping my left hand, which had turned red and looked like one of those comical foam hands. He bundled me into a taxi to the nearest hospital, and thank God he did.

As the nurse took my temperature her eyes widened with horror; soon I was being rushed into an ambulance to be seen by the tropical diseases team in a nearby hospital. I was conscious in the ambulance, asking a million questions, but was out by the time we arrived. I went into what is known as hyperpyrexia, an extreme elevation in core body temperature. At 43C (109F), I had the ward’s highest temperature that didn’t result in death.

I regained consciousness shortly after an emergency operation to open up the wound to clean it and assess the damage. My arm was almost black, with track marks that snaked towards my shoulder; which I later found out was the potent venom from a female brown recluse spider, a cousin of the black widow; it was spreading. I was pumped with every kind of antibiotic and drip as initially they didn’t know it was a spider bite; the tell-tale black spot with a white ring had been removed during the emergency wound-cleaning session.

I had both a dermonecrotic and systemic reaction, meaning not only that the venom killed off skin and tissue but also my organs started to shut down as my blood thickened, which is rare and can be fatal. The doctors had to constantly put me under to open the back of my hand to cut away the flesh, trying to stop the venom and necrosis (the death of tissue cells) spreading further. They were also trying to work out what the venom was and pumping me with different drugs to bring down my temperature.

After two weeks in hospital, the doctor recommended amputating the arm up to the elbow because of the risk of necrosis spreading to my heart; I was adamant I’d rather have died. Now, with a clear head, I can imagine a life without one arm that would be preferable to dying. I was tired, confused and on a lot of morphine.

I had to undergo four operations in four weeks. The doctor said that after these gruelling procedures, my body had started to combat the necrosis, which meant I didn’t have to lose the arm after all. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had cheated death.

I had a skin graft from my thigh to replace the tissue I’d lost on my arm. That was the worst part of the experience – it was so painful. James didn’t find out about the spider until three weeks later – it was only confirmed when the hospital had ruled out all other options and cross-referenced photographs of the bite taken at the first hospital. When he did find out, he had the whole place fumigated, then left two months later. I don’t think he could cope with the anxiety.

The skin graft took well and after waiting for six months for it to fully heal, I was able to begin physiotherapy. My hand had been immobile for so long and had lost so much muscle that even twitching my fingers was agony. After a year I got most of the dexterity back but, even now, I still can’t feel the back of my left hand.

I never got to see the spider that bit me and I still don’t know how it got into the fruit bowl (or the country for that matter; they are native to North America). I was never scared of spiders before, but after seeing a photo of what bit me, I now never reach into a bowl of fruit without looking first.

• As told to Louisa Cavell

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