A Sydney teen, who was bitten by a highly venomous funnel-web spider while sleeping, has been reunited with a crew of zookeepers that helped save his life.
Ollie Kay, 19, from Hornsby, woke one balmy February night with burning pain on his forearm.
He pulled back his sheets and saw a large, hairy black spider crawling in his bed.
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His quick-thinking girlfriend filmed the arachnid and a Google search confirmed their worst nightmare.
It was a male funnel-web spider, which is capable of killing an adult in less than 90 minutes.
A terrifying suite of symptoms emerged within minutes: sweating, nausea, heart palpitations and light-headedness.
"The symptoms kind of started showing as we were trying to decide what to do," Kay said.
"I started shaking, sweating a lot.
"That's when we decided to go to hospital."
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Doctors took no chances when Kay arrived at the emergency room and administered two vials of lifesaving antivenom.
But the teen wasn't out of the woods just yet.
The troponin levels of his heart peaked at an alarming level, prompting calls for urgent resuscitation in case a heart attack occurred.
Kay was kept in hospital for three days for monitoring and was thankfully cleared of a cardiac event.
"They did a lot of heart scans to make sure there was no damage to the heart," Kay said.
His father John said the ordeal was hard to watch.
"The panic came in after when we realised just how serious it was and what could have happened if we had been there 10-15 minutes later," he said.
"So that's when, as a parent, you think, wow – that was really close."
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Teen meets those who helped save life
Just a month after the bite, the teen toured Australian Reptile Park on NSW's South Coast, meeting the team who helps produce the antivenom.
The facility is the only place in the world where funnel-webs are milked for venom, which goes to producing antivenom.
Operations manager, Billy Collett, said meeting Kay was one of the highlights of his career.
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There's not been a fatal spider bite in Australia since 1981, when the park's spider venom program was launched.
"It was incredibly rewarding for the team to meet a funnel-web spider bite survivor – to get to shake the hand of someone who's still here today because of the work we do," he said.
"The team puts an incredible amount of hours into our spider venom milking program.
"To get enough raw venom for just one vial of antivenom, we need to milk 150 spiders.
"It motivates us to keep doing what we do every single day."
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Collett said Kay's story shows how important it is to know the correct first aid for funnel-web spider bites.
"Even if you're unsure of what type of spider has bitten you, it's crucial that you treat it as potentially life-threatening and seek urgent medical attention or call triple-zero," he said.
"Ollie's story is a reminder of just how serious a funnel-web spider bite can be."
It is also recommended to apply a pressure immobilisation bandage to a suspected funnel-web bite, should one be at hand.
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