An embarrassed woman who broke her leg avoiding a spider drove to work fearing colleagues would think she was trying to duck out of a team-building weekend. Sharon Edwards, 43, of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, did the damage jumping backwards in fear when she encountered a tiny spider in her back garden.
The travel agent assumed it was a sprain and began driving to work.
She headed instead for hospital when she realised she could not feel how hard she was pressing on the pedals.
"I have an absolute fear of spiders. I was taking the rubbish out and a spider had managed to build a web across the path where the bins were," Sharon said,
 |  They X-rayed it and said I had broken my tibia. The doctors couldn't believe I had actually driven to the hospital  |
"It was only little but it was the shock of seeing it two inches from my nose. I know I stepped back and when I came down I thought, 'Ouch, I've hurt my leg'." She felt silly and embarrassed so wrapped her ankle in a wet towel to head for work at Thomas Cook, thinking it would soon mend.
By the time she reached Peterborough District Hospital the pain was so bad she was in tears.
"They X-rayed it and said I had broken my tibia. The doctors couldn't believe I had actually driven to the hospital," she said.
Sharon's only consolation is that her plastered leg meant she did finally avoid the dreaded weekend's orienteering in Rutland.
"I had been trying to get out of it and after I hurt my leg I thought, 'I've got to go in because they will never believe I have done this," she said.
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