Mom left fighting for her life after multiple spider bites during campfire with family

WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) - A Kansas mother was left fighting for her life after multiple spiders bit her during a lakeside campfire with her family. Now, after months of medical treatment, she needs a liver transplant.

Britagne Miller, a mother of four, says she and her family were at Cheney Lake enjoying a campfire on May 28 when spiders started crawling all over her, leaving bites all over her body.

“I felt like 15 spiders climb up my legs and into my shirt, and I’m terrified of spiders,” Miller said. “I had spider bites on both sides of my leg.”

Four days later, Miller says she went to the hospital for a painful bruise on her calf near one of the bites.

“This one kept swelling and swelling,” she said. “It was like shooting down my leg into my foot, and it felt like it was being stabbed.”

She was soon told she needed surgery.

“I’m terrified of surgery, that I’m going to go to sleep and not wake up or that I’m going to bleed out,” Miller said.

When she was pregnant with her daughter in 2014, Miller was diagnosed with two blood clotting disorders. Over the years, she developed a compromised liver and allergies to food and medications. With these diagnoses, she says the idea of surgery was scary and was not a part of her plan.

Still, Miller went ahead with the procedure, during which doctors removed blood clots, stitched her wound and put in a drain.

After five days in recovery, her wound became infected with a blood and staph infection. What’s more, doctors believed she was in end-stage liver failure, with only days to a month left to live.

“They couldn’t keep my levels above even critical,” Miller said. “They gave me three days up to a month to live, so that was scary.”

But Miller says she beat the odds, surviving multiple surgeries and infections for a month, with a long journey ahead to qualify for a liver transplant. Now, she’s just trying to enjoy her time with her family.

“When I was like two to three weeks in, I was like, ‘I give up,’” she said. “I’m done being cut open. I’m done being poked and prodded. I’m done hurting. Then, I thought about all of them.”

Doctors don’t know what kind of spider bit Miller, but they believe it was a brown recluse, one of two venomous spiders found in Kansas.

A GoFundMe has been started to help the family with hospital and ongoing medical expenses, home health care and everyday necessities.