WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES Halle Hizer, 20, spent a week away in Rhodes with her gran last month when just two days into the trip, she woke up with a swollen left ear
A tourist “almost lost her ear” after a horror spider bite while on holiday in Greece in gruesome scenes.
Halle Hizer, 20, spent a week away in Rhodes with her gran last month when, just two days into the trip, she woke up with a swollen left ear.
She initially believed it was from wearing her air pods during the flight. However, the musical theatre student’s ear quickly swelled up to double the size like a “cauliflower”, and a private doctor gave her antibiotics.
Halle said: “We went for a week just to relax and it ended up becoming a horror show. I woke up and my ear was really swollen. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought it was a case of when you wear your air pods for too long and it was rubbing on my ear when it can hurt sometimes.
“The next day it kept getting bigger and bigger and pus started coming out of it and I didn’t think at the time that I needed to go see a doctor or to the hospital. I thought maybe I had an ear infection.
“I went to the pharmacist and they gave me some antibiotic cream so I rubbed that on it but nothing was helping. It got to Friday and my grandma said ‘we definitely need to see someone’.
“A doctor came and saw and he just took one look over and said ‘you’ve got a bad infection in your ear and that’s it’. He gave me antibiotics and I was taking them but my ear wasn’t getting any better. It was getting worse.”
Flying back home to Enfield, North London, on June 6, she began experiencing ‘stabbing’ pains, with a stream of pus flowing from her ear.
Horrifying footage shows the pus oozing from the infected wound, as Halle panicked, fearing she would lose her ear.
“From the pressure on the aeroplane my ear felt like someone stabbing me. My ear was double the size, it was like a cauliflower. I was scared I’d lose my ear because I was worried it was going to go septic.”
Rushing to hospital back in the UK, she was horrified to learn that the antibiotics she was given in Greece hadn’t been used in medicine for years and had led to the infection. Doctors were forced to surgically remove the abscess and surgeons revealed she’d been bitten by a spider.
“I wasn’t expecting to find spiders like that in Greece,” she said. “[In hospital] they asked me ‘ do you know what happened?’ I said not really. At the time we thought it was just a mosquito bite.
“That’s when they realised from testing it that it wasn’t a mosquito but it was a spider. You could see from the back the bite marks.
“It was swollen from the back and the front which I didn’t realise at the time. I’m not too sure what type of spider it was. Every five minutes my ear would be leaking. The doctors told me I would need surgery to remove the abscess.”
The infection, doctors confirmed, was down to the very antibiotics she had been prescribed in Greece.
“[The doctor] said ‘what antibiotics you were on’ and I showed him the packet and he said ‘that’s so strange. We haven’t used this antibiotic for years in medicine because it’s been proven it doesn’t work anymore’.
“I was quite shocked because I spent $180 euros on a private doctor [in Greece] and he gave me antibiotics that weren’t even used in medicine anymore.
“Because I wasn’t given the right antibiotics my ear ended up getting so infected to the point pus was coming out that was basically poison.
“If I was put on the right antibiotics to begin with it would’ve just got rid of the infection straight away but it just kept getting worse and worse.”
Taking to TikTok, the holidaymaker shared footage of her spider bite captioned ‘still waiting for the spidey senses to kick in’, which has since gone viral with more than 2.1million views.
The student was on antibiotics for two weeks and had a bandage around her head but the swelling has now gone down.
She now urges other holidaymakers to use insect repellent and to read the cleanliness reviews of hotels as she believes that could’ve played a part.
Halle said: “My ear has gone back to normal and it’s not huge anymore. A lot of the scabbing is gone now and have fallen off. It’s still a little bit tender but granted because they did cut my ear open.
“I have a new fear of spiders but I’m hoping because we’re in the UK I’m not going to come across any spider of that nature but who knows because I didn’t think I was going to come across that in Greece.
“Make sure you have the repellent with you and make sure the hotel is clean because I feel like that played a big factor in it. Me and my grandma regret not reading the reviews. Just do your research before you go to places so you’re not disappointed.”