A SPIDER saved a man’s life when it bit him and treatment for the bite revealed a life-threatening cancer.

David Durrant, 48, was bitten by the venomous arachnid while fixing his car outside his house in Quarry Square, off James Street, Maidstone.

He was annoyed at the inconvenience but little did he know that the spider bite would lead to him being diagnosed with cancer, early enough for him to be successfully treated.

Mr Durrant had been lying on the ground mending his car engine when he was bitten between his left shoulder and neck.

Despite the bite swelling to the size of a tennis ball he wasn’t aware of it until his fiancee Julie Arnold pointed it out.

He said: “She could see it because it was so big. It wasn’t painful but you could see two little red dots like fang marks about 2mm apart. I thought it had to be a spider because the fangs were too close together to be anything else.”

Because of the abnormal swelling, Mr Durrant decided to go to Maidstone Hospital where staff agreed the markings matched those of a spider bite and prescribed antibiotics.

In the next two weeks the swelling persisted and he returned to the hospital where medical staff did an ultrasound and biopsy.

When he was told the lump was cancerous, Mr Durrant said he went into shock as he had shown no symptoms that anything else was wrong.

He said: “I had gone in with a spider bite and was told I had Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was in disbelief. The spider bite was right on top of the affected lymph nodes in my neck and they had done their job properly and swollen.”

He said: “My consultant Dr Mark Hill said he knew I’d been cursing the spider but I should be thanking it because I’d had cancer quite some time. Without the bite, the cancer might not have been found because I wouldn’t have gone to hospital.”

Mr Durrant has been given a clean bill of health after three months of chemotherapy and a follow up course of radiotherapy and will soon be able to return to work.