A Paget woman had to have six inches of skin surgically removed two years ago when she was bitten by a brown recluse spider.

Milaikia Hewey contacted the newspaper this weekend after reading a story in about the spider and then seeing a ZBM news report on Friday which said it was an urban legend.

?I was appalled,? she said. ?That?s no urban legend. I know, I lost six inches off my lower abdomen because of a brown recluse spider.?

Mrs. Hewey said she was living at Khyber Pass in Warwick at the time and was sitting on the floor cleaning her cupboard when she suddenly felt dizzy.

?I had to lie down,? she said.

At first the bite was just itchy and all she could see was what looked like a small blister.

But, by the time her mother came home about three hours later, the small ?blister? on her stomach looked more like an oil burn.

?The skin had gone black,? she said.

?My mother took me to the hospital and the doctors did not know what it was.?

Mrs. Hewey said a doctor came over to have a look and told her she?d been bitten by a brown recluse spider.

She said doctors had to ?cut out? the skin, leaving her with a ?nasty? scar to her lower abdomen.

The worst part was that she did not even feel the bite and never saw the spider, she added.

?When I eventually went home I could not go back into that room until pest control came to fumigate,? she said.

Mrs. Hewey also went online to learn more.

?I had no idea these spiders were found in Bermuda, or that something that small could leave such a horrible bite,? she said.