Spider Bite Leads to Shocking, Life-Threatening Diagnosis

A North Carolina man says what he first brushed off as a routine spider bite ended up saving his life — after doctors discovered he was just days away from dying from an aggressive form of cancer.

Bobby Sipka, 62, was working on his rural property in Moyock, North Carolina, in late May when he felt what he believed was a bite from a juvenile brown recluse spider on his elbow. At the time, he barely gave it a second thought.

“I didn’t think much of it,” Sipka said. “I hate going to doctors, so I probably wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for that.”

But over the following weeks, Sipka’s health began unraveling in ways that didn’t seem connected. After slipping on a boat ramp and aggravating an old Achilles injury, he noticed bruises that wouldn’t fade, wounds that refused to heal, and a crushing fatigue that kept getting worse. Antibiotics didn’t help. The spider bite itself also failed to improve.

“Things that should have healed just didn’t,” Sipka said.

Concerned, he went to a hospital in Elizabeth City. As his condition deteriorated, doctors sent him to specialists in Virginia. Within hours of arriving at Sentara’s cancer center in Virginia Beach, blood tests delivered devastating news: Sipka had acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer.

Doctors told him that without immediate treatment, he had only days to live.

“They said if I hadn’t come in when I did, I had maybe three to seven days,” Sipka recalled. “If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, I wouldn’t be here.”

The diagnosis suddenly explained months of warning signs his family had noticed — unexplained weight loss, declining energy, and exhaustion that no one initially connected to something so serious. Sipka said his first thoughts were of his grandchildren.

“I didn’t want them growing up without a grandfather,” he said. “I wasn’t done yet.”

Doctors immediately began aggressive chemotherapy. Sipka spent 50 days hospitalized, enduring treatments so intense he was sometimes too weak to walk or even lift his head.

“There were moments I wanted to give up,” he said. “I didn’t think the chemo was working.”

He credits the nursing staff with helping him push through his darkest days. One moment still stands out: a nurse got down on her knees beside his bed, held his hand, and looked him straight in the eye.

“She told me she’d seen this before,” Sipka said. “They didn’t have to do that.”

During one wound dressing change, a nurse even sang Amazing Grace alongside Sipka’s niece at his bedside.

Nearly seven weeks after he arrived, Sipka was finally discharged. On his last day, nurses — including some who weren’t even scheduled to work — lined the hallway as he was wheeled out. Before leaving, he rang the hospital’s remission bell.

“They took care of me medically, but they took care of me emotionally too,” Sipka said. “That wasn’t part of the job.”

Now in remission, Sipka continues monthly chemotherapy injections and takes daily chemotherapy pills to manage the disease. On January 7, he traveled to Duke University for a bone marrow transplant consultation. Without a donor, doctors told him his life expectancy could be significantly shortened.

“You realize you’re on a clock unless someone steps forward,” he said.

Sipka and his family are also urging people to donate blood and platelets, after shortages delayed transfusions during his treatment.

“There were times they didn’t even have my blood type on hand,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of hours before someone could die because blood doesn’t last forever.”

Sipka is clear that the spider bite didn’t cause his cancer — but it did push him to seek care when he otherwise wouldn’t have.

“It just got me to the doctor,” he said. “That saved my life.”