MadameZelda
Sometimes it takes a serious, even life threatening illness, before people consider the possibility that their doctors don't know everything, in fact aren't educated enough to look further. That goes for both pets and people. I've never understood this denial of things like parasites, like you only risk an infestation if you've been traveling outside the U.S. It's arrogant to deny our reality. We have them. Anyone can get them, although historically, some parts of the world have been riskier to live in than others. And even that is probably going to change permamently. If a parasite was once prevalent in one part of the world, with our global economy and climate changes, give that particular parasite several shipping containers of food and they'll travel the world.
My mother always accepted whatever her doctor told her. My father is the opposite. He's always taken time to educate himeself on symptoms and push his doctor for answers or to try new things. He's the only person I know whose doctor writes him prescriptions for vitamins!
I think at some point in the future, it will be very common wisdom that if you're regularly worming a pet, you're also worming yourself. We used to do this as a matter of course. Then it fell out of fashion.