New Delhi, Aug. 4 -- GODDARD, Kan. - On the evening of May 28, Britagne Miller was sitting with her family around a campfire near Cheney Lake when something in the grass found her. She wasn't sure, at first, how many times she had been bitten. The bites didn't register as an emergency. Not until four days later, when the pain in her calf turned into swelling she described as feeling like "a fire stir that's metal," did she go to the hospital.

What followed left the Goddard mother of four on a waiting list for a liver transplant, fighting to stabilize a body that her spider bites had set into a cascading medical emergency.

Health officials and her treating physicians believe Miller was bitten by approximately 15 brown recluse spiders dur...