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The itsy bitsy spider climbed in his open mouth.
Thought having a frog in your throat was bad? A UK postman realized every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare after a spider bit the inside of his throat while he was asleep — which caused it to swell up so badly he couldn’t breathe.
“I thought I was going to die,” Chris Cowsley, 52, told SWNS of receiving this interspecies French kiss of death, which occurred around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday.
“It had been a perfectly normal night but then I woke up choking and couldn’t breathe,” recounted the aghast Hertfordshire native. “I had to stick a finger down my throat to get some air in but as soon as I took it out I couldn’t breathe again.”
The petrified mailman subsequently dialed 999, the UK’s emergency services number, and alerted them to his predicament.
“I don’t know how the poor lady who took the 999 call understood what I was saying because I couldn’t speak,” Cowsly recalled.
Paramedics arrived shortly thereafter and inspected the victim’s throat, whereupon they dropped a shocking diagnosis: Cowsly had reportedly “inhaled” a spider in his sleep, which then bit his uvula — the fleshy protuberance at the back of the throat — on the way down his gullet.
“They hooked me up to machines — and the first thing he said was, ‘I think you’ve swallowed a spider,'” the letter courier recalled. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.”
It’s yet unclear what species of arachnid was flushed down Cowsly’s water spout, however, doctors nonetheless didn’t take any chances.
“They looked after me really well at the hospital,” described the patient, who was administered saline solution and antibiotics via an IV drip.
Medics even referred Cowsly to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who hooked endoscopic cameras up to his nose and the back of his throat to make sure everything was copasetic.
After determining that the victim’s gullet was no longer swollen, doctors discharged him at 7:30 a.m.
“I just really wanted to thank the paramedics and all the team at Lister because I think they could well have saved my life,” the patient gushed.
Despite no longer being in peril, Cowsly took pains to spider-proof his home to prevent himself from having another unwanted eight-legged breakfast in bed.
“I couldn’t sleep until I vacuumed the whole house and put a spider-repellant plug in the wall,” said the Brit.
He suggested he wasn’t being overzealous as these creepy crawly venom merchants are a normal find in their countryside dwelling.
Thankfully, the bite recipient hasn’t had any arachnid issues since, although he “[finds] it hard to get to sleep again.”
Either way, perhaps this spine-tingling scenario lends some legitimacy to the myth that people swallow spiders in their sleep — even if the number is a bit inflated.
This isn’t the first time someone received a spider bite in an unfortunate spot.
In March, an Irishman feared would lose his penis after incurring a nasty arachnid hickey, which caused a golf-ball-sized lump to sprout up perilously close to his private parts.
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