Paraplegic Man Suffers Spider Bite, Walks Again Reporting
Mike Dello Stritto MANTECA, Calif. (CBS13) ―







numSlides of totalImages Related Slideshows CBS13.com Mug Shot Gallery Weird California Laws Weird Laws From Around The Nation 2008 Year Of Weirdness He has been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again, and his doctors call it a miracle. CBS13 went to Manteca to find out how a spider bite helped get him back on his feet.

"I closed my eyes and then I was spinning like a flying saucer," explains David Blancarte.

A motorcycle accident almost killed David 21 years ago. At the time he might have wished he was dead.

"I asked my doctor, 'Sir what happened? I can't feel my legs'," said David.

Ever since, David's been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.

"I'm here for a spider bite. I didn't know I would end up walking," says David.

A nurse noticed David's leg spasm and ran a test on him.

"When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like 'whoa' and I yelled," he says.

He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.

"She says,'your nerves are alive. They're just asleep'," explained David.

Five days later David was walking.

"I was walking on the bar back and forth," he said.

Now David is out of the hospital and on his feet and walking.

David basks in his glory and gives a ray of hope to other hoping to walk again. The 48-year-old former boxer and dancer is taking it in stride, knowing his best days are still ahead.

David's dream is to see his 14-year-old twin daughters grow up and get married so he can walk them down the aisle and have that first dance.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)



A Manteca paraplegic who said he can walk again, thanks to a bite from a rare spider, was arrested Friday on a domestic violence warrant.

David Blancarte's story garnered headlines earlier in the week.

He was unable to walk following a motorcycle accident some 20 years ago.

But a bite from a Recluse spider led to a change in his condition.

After receiving further medical treatment, Blancarte was able to get around with the help of a walker.

But on Friday, Blancarte was in the San Joaquin County Jail.

i don't know about "miracle", but it would definitely suggest that there might be some good in doing more research on the neurotoxins in the brown recluse bite.

Indeed.

A rare spider?? I have been bitten twice by them. I am so paranoid of it happening again that I look all over for them.

I say "hooorah"!!! that it helped him. You go dude.

Kat

Bee stings do something similar for some MS patients. I believe snake venom has been tried for this too with MS patients.

Neurotoxins are interesting.

I'm thinking that the 8 mths. of rehab helped him and not the toxins from the spider bite. I've been bitten by a brown recluse. My father has had been bitten twice and had two surgeries for the bites. The bite from the brown recluse in destructive. It cause the body's tissues to deteriorate.

my daughter was biten by a spider(not that kind)a few yrs ago as where she had to drain the poison out. and my youngest granddaughter got one on her leg several times and it was gross you could actually feel the fever on her leg when you got the poison out from all the junk.. my other 2 grandkids never gotten bitten from a spider(i remember now it was called a hobs spider)

I agree, absolutely facinating. Miracle?, can't relate to that unless I can accept that they are supposed to be random or selective, and I can't.

I hope to hear more about this...

it is my Understanding that the Brown "Recluse" does not Live West of the Mississippi but that it's Cousin the Brown Spider Does! either way it Still Pretty Cool.

St. Louis is west of the Mississippi and we have a problem with them.
All of Missouri does. I lived in a town near Kansas City, MO, and they were terrible there. People were deformed from them.

Hmm, MO is Still Quite Wet and Humid Which as I Understood was the Environment they Need to Survive. where as Here in the West Not So Much! We Have the Brown Spider here which is it's Cousin and Just as Nasty.

I'll have to see what the Brown Spider is about. I wasn't aware that the recluse had a cousin in AZ. Interesting. If I have a pair of shoes in the closest that I haven't worn in awhile, I shake them out.

When I was living by Kansas City, I was bit in the underarm area. I think it was while I was sleeping. My Dad got bit two different areas on the back of his thigh. He thinks it was from sitting in his car when it was parked by the Mississippi River. We don't know for sure, of course. He had a hunk of his thigh removed.