Healthy Teen Bitten by Spider Has To Fight for His Life as Organs Begin To Fail

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The family of an Iowa teen are speaking out after a spider bite left him incapacitated for weeks. Noah Johnson was working outside when a spider bit him. In that moment, life would change for him and his family quickly. Spider bites, much like many other bug bites, can have a variety of effects on people. While many spider bites aren’t poisonous, there’s no way to know how a body will react. Over a course of days, the 16-year-old found himself making repeated trips to the hospital. Until one day, his body began to shut down.

“He felt something crawl on him,” his mom, Brandy Johnson, told People in an exclusive interview. “He said he just jumped.”

The teen was working outside for his brother’s fencing business in an effort to make enough money to buy himself a new truck. That evening, they discovered a spider had bitten him on his left butt cheek. He went to a friend’s house, spending the night there. When he returned home the next morning, he told his mom that the bite “really hurts.” She told him to keep an eye on it and let her know if things got worse.

Days later, the bite, which had two black puncture marks, tripled in size. “He couldn’t even sit down on his bottom,” his mom explained.

On June 23, five days after he was bitten, Brandy Johnson took her son to urgent care. Doctors suspected an infection, telling them that there aren’t any deadly spiders in Iowa. They prescribed antibiotics, but the infection only got worse.

Several days later, Noah Johnson couldn’t walk. He had been battling a high fever, and was given more antibiotics. When he couldn’t walk, he was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, and three infected areas were cut out of his body. The next morning, he was in kidney failure.

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“Every day they thought he might get a little better, he went back downhill,” his aunt, Chastity Schonhorst told People. “It was heartbreaking.”

Noah was placed in the ICU and doctors started dialysis. Doctors discovered he was having a severe allergic reaction to the first antibiotics he was given. He fought an infection in his small intestines “for weeks.”

While in the hospital, the teen, who was incredibly athletic and active before the bite, lost 35 pounds. He was also bedridden, and at times, couldn’t speak. On July 16, he felt strong enough to speak his concerns to his mom.

“He thought he was dying. He said, ‘I’m very scared,’” Brandy Johnson said. “I told him, ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. You’re going to be OK.’”

Noah Johnson was well enough to stop dialysis and be moved out of the ICU in mid-July. On July 21, he was well enough to go home. But there is still a long road ahead. “He’s doing much better, but will need weeks of physical therapy, medications and many doctor’s visits,” his mom said.

“We live in a world that never slows down,” Brandy Johnson said of the experience. “When someone you love — especially your child — suddenly becomes gravely ill, everything changes in an instant. The world you knew just a moment ago disappears.”

To aid in his recovery, the moms of some of the teen’s friends created a GoFundMe to help the family with medical bills and other needs.

“We spend so much of our lives believing we need more, but when you’re staring at the possibility of losing someone, you realize you already had everything that mattered.”