Early in May, I noticed a slight rash on the back of my leg. But considering I’d been working in the yard and it was on the back of my leg, I honestly didn’t pay much attention.

That is, until a couple of days later, when it woke me up at 2:00 a.m. with sharp, searing pain shooting through the nerves in my leg. Some time spent on the Internet left me pretty much convinced I had been bitten by a brown recluse spider and that I was probably going to have to have my leg amputated.