I think 'we' need a good laugh! Subj. pork tapeworm

Here is an amusing (but appropriate) extract from the travel diaries of Jason ( http://dimbrightness.com/blog.htm
)

September 10th

Well, these last few days have been a great revelation to me. Having flooded my system with herbal chemotherapy some unwelcome guests have begun to crawl out of the woodwork. Sensitive readers should probably skip this post.

Almost from the first moment after I swallowed my capsules of Vitaklenz things began to protest from within. Like the balrog in Lord of the Rings rising from the fiery pits of hell, something down there wasn't happy. OK, I'll spare you all the details, but some mighty odd things began to appear from within me. What looked like chunks of fried squid and, later, blobs of raw steak and what appeared to be a chunk of backbone, offered themselves up for inspection. I was elated. To understand my elation you have to first know that I've been ill and getting iller for the past four years ever since a trip to Costa Rica over the millennium. In the beginning I was certain that I'd contracted a parasite on my travels, but a long succession of doctors subsequently told me that I hadn't. I visited nine different doctors in England, Denmark and Nepal and they all told me more or less the same thing 'There's nothing wrong with you, snap out of it'.

I was jubilant when Michelle got home from work. 'Look what I've found' I cried, waving a petri dish under her nose. She wasn't as enthusiastic as me, perhaps understandably. Chances are, if I have a parasite then she does too. After all, we ate the same things on that trip. I ordered a celebratory pizza and looked forwards to my next bowel movement.

The next day the seahorses began to appear. A small delicate-looking thing with pink skin lay before me on a piece of glass. Frustrated at not being able to examine it properly, I biked into Copenhagen and purchased a kid's microscope from a department store. Back home in my 'lab' I put the seahorse on a slide and looked at its face. It was an ugly thing, not unlike that monster from Return of the Jedi that lives in a sand pit and has big teeth. I looked at it through the microscope and it looked back at me with its dead eyes. But it was, unmistakably taenia solium - the pork tapeworm.

I jumped for joy. You might think this an odd reaction, but again, you'd have to remember that I've been suffering from an undiagnosed complaint for all this time. I already knew a lot about the pork Tapeworm - I've done a lot of research into parasites these past few years. I know, for instance, that it's endemic in Central and South America and that left untreated it will probably cause cysticercosis. That's when the eggs travel through your bloodstream to choice feeding grounds and form embryonic cysts that can cause all sorts of unpleasant problems. Amazingly, the parasite has evolved with us and our immune system cannot detect it.

I believe that I am suffering from cysticercosis. I have practically all the symptoms - I'm amazed that no doctor picked up on this.

OK some of you may find this quite gross (and so do I, to tell the truth) but I have baby worms floating around in my eyeballs. I can see them all the time and they're driving me nuts. Of course, they're only microscopic, but I can see them nevertheless. And if they've got to my eyes that means they're probably in the membrane around my brain too - another favourite breeding ground of theirs. That might explain the constant headaches, blurred vision and loss of balance - all common symptoms. Also, I know that these things have got into my heart, my spine, my throat and my left lung.

Am I worried about all this? Yes, of course I am. But I know that a quick course of prescription drugs will kill the blighters dead before they can do any more harm. I made an appointment to see the doctor and they again told me it wasn't urgent and told me to come in in one month (they're fed up with me coming in and moaning about feeling like I'm about to die - I think they think I'm just angling for some free social security). I said no way and went in immediately. Specimen jar in hand I shoved my three showcase worms (whom I've named George, Dick (the fat white one) and Donald) into the doctor's face. 'That's interesting' she said, clearly embarrassed. I've been going on about being infested with parasites for two years and she has, in all this time, maintained that I was simply suffering from indigestion and tried to get me to eat some expensive patented pills. She took my menagerie away from me for analysis at a lab. I have to wait two weeks for the results.

In the meantime I'm carrying on taking Vitaklenz. I feel better than I've felt in a long long time. No longer does my head feel like it's about to snap off at the neck. I can breathe deeply into my left lung and the pressure I've been feeling on my heart is gone - as are the headaches, earaches and blocked nose. No longer does it click when I breathe and the bloating in my stomach has gone down. Small things are twitching under my skin on my left leg and arm - which I hope are little wormlets singing their swan songs. The munching noise that I sometimes hear in my head in the middle of the night has stopped - allowing for much better sleep. If all this disgusts you then I'm sorry. If I've learned anything from this then it boiled down to two things a) Don't eat meat in tropical countries and b) Doctors don't know jack shit about this kind of thing so you'd better get your labcoat on and do some analysis and research yourself.



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