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Australian man claims spider burrowed under his skin

A dream Bali holiday has had a nightmare ending for Australian Dylan Thomas after doctors pulled a tropical spider from his stomach. Network 10 Australia

EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story included a video in which a man showed a scar near his navel where he claimed a spider burrowed under his skin. The contents of the video cannot be verified independently so Global News has removed it.

TORONTO – An Australian man claims his Bali vacation was ruined after an exotic arachnid burrowed into his skin.

Twenty-one-year-old Dylan Thomas says he woke up last  Saturday morning to discover a two-inch mark near his belly button.

“There was no blisters, no abrasiveness, it just seemed like a scratch,” Thomas said. “I didn’t think anything about it. [I] went throughout my normal day and it got longer and travelled upwards.”

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Thomas said by the time he got to a doctor there was a huge vertical mark from his belly to pectoral muscles.

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The mark left by the spider started near Dylan Thomas’ belly button and continued up to his pectoral muscles. Facebook

To make matters worse, he says, he was misdiagnosed.

“The doctor told me it was just an insect bite. [They] gave me some antihistamine cream to put on it,” he told an Australian reporter. “I went home and by the next morning – Sunday morning – I’d woken up and it had blistered right from the bottom all the way up my body.”

Thomas says he got a second opinion at Bali International Hospital. He claims a dermatologist recognized the issue and located and removed the spider.

“They managed to pull the spider out of my navel and put it in a specimen jar and took it away,” Thomas said. “It was probably about [a] bit bigger than the size of a match stick head.”

The story lit up social media sites and was picked up by dozens of media outlets. However, doubt has been cast on the man’s story.

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