Spider Bite Horror - Kiwi Mum's Fight For Life!

Bitten three times by creepy-crawlies, Maree’s bearing the scars

- Julie Jacobson

The red and raw- looking skin on Maree Gopfert’s thigh is a daily reminder of how close she came to dying.

The young Wellington mum is lucky to be alive after battling a flesh-eating bacterial infection that saw doctors cut out large chunks of flesh in her lower right leg that has left her with nerve damage and a mass of scar tissue.

Unable to work, the doting mum is reliant on family members to look after her children, Bonnie, seven, and two-year-old Wolf.

“To think they could have lost their mum is pretty sad,” the 28-year-old tells, revealing how, just days before she ended up in hospital, she, Wolf and a niece had all been bitten by white-tailed spiders. Eerily, her sister Sharleen had been treated with antibiotics a month earlier after a whitetail bite on her lower back turned septic

Maree’s tale of terror began early last month, when she was bitten three times within the space of as many days while staying at Sharleen’s rented home in Porirua’s Titahi Bay.

The first bite – on her ankle – became filled with pus and swelled up. A GP prescribed antibiotics. She was then bitten on her hip and her shin. With little swelling and no pain, Maree thought she would be fine. She went dirt-biking with friends, staying overnight at Orange Hut, a campsite in the Akatarawa Valley.

But 24 hours later, Maree was in excruciating pain. She had a fever, and her leg was red and swollen. Sharleen, 24, took her sister to Hutt Hospital’s emergency department. She was given antibiotics, told there was no need to worry and sent home.