After Keith finished a routine football game, his parent noticed that his leg was beginning to swell. According to the Daily Mail, as a precaution they took him to Bozeman Deaconess hospital, where doctors examined him and ruled out a number of serious possibilities, including cancer, before sending him home.
Sadly, Keith was far from in the clear. His symptoms soon worsened, and he was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital in Billings. Once there, he underwent emergency surgery designed to save his life.
It was too little, too late. The 10-year-old never woke up.
Keith’s family were then forced to make a heart-wrenching decision. They consented to his life-support machine being turned off, and Keith slipped away.
NBC Montana explained that a post-mortem forensic examination then determined Keith had actually died from a spider bite sustained while playing football. The venom, from a brown recluse spider, had induced severe sepsis.
Family friend Alicia Clark helped to set up an online fundraiser for Keith’s grieving parents.
“We were not sure if they had any kind of medical insurance,” Clark said to ABC Fox Montana at the time, “and even with medical insurance there is so much—funeral expenses are so expensive—so we thought we would try an online fundraiser.”
Keith was taken from the world too early, and under exceptionally cruel circumstances. The bite from the brown recluse spider can prove fatal to victims, and sadly many of us wouldn’t even be able to identify it.
Watch the video below for further help in identifying bug bites and stings:
Rest in peace, Keith Pierce. We’re sending all our thoughts and prayers in the direction of his family.
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