There are very few things out there that make me want to crawl out of my skin. The oddest among them is running a hand over wallpaper. To me, it’s the equivalent of running a fingernail over a chalkboard. Until a month ago, worms were not my list of Things That Make You Go Ugh. But one intestinal parasitic infection later, and the idea of worms makes my skin crawl.
I want to start off by advising that there’s a certain Gross Factor to this Happy Trails, which isn’t so ‘happy’ this edition. That said, you have two options:
1) If you’re squeamish, read no more.
2) If you’re squeamish, try to sympathize and imagine that if you’re squeamish reading about worms, imagine how squeamish it must have been for me to HAVE them. It really does put a whole new meaning to the word ‘squeamish.’
One of the scariest moments in movie history to me as a child was seeing the alien baby burst out of John Hurt’s stomach in Alien. It was horrifying, thinking about something crawling around inside you then making a sudden and shocking appearance.
In Alien, the horror begins after a bioform boards the spaceship Nostromo. My horror began after a cat walked into our garage.
It was a mild night shortly before Christmas and my wife and I were in our garage trying to make room for both our cars to fit before the cold of January came. Getting two cars to fit a two-garage is apparently impossible, and we were about ready to give up (me resigning to another winter of cold driving), when we heard what sounded like a baby crying outside. It only took us a second to realize it wasn’t a baby but a cat who was hunkered down next to the tire of our minivan that was parked on our driveway (where it’s condemned to endure the remainder of this winter). Our garage was part open, and when the cat saw us peer under the door, he took our attention as an invitation and moseyed into our garage, purring and meowing and hungry for food and more attention.
My wife and I are not cat people, and we know better than to touch stray or wild animals, but my wife and I both have a soft spot for animals in distress. My wife particularly. She’d help a baby alligator if it needed help.
After a couple hours tending to the cat in our garage, the temperature started to drop, and we felt bad about sending him back on his way or leaving him in sub-zero temperatures, so we made the decision to bring him in and put him in the unfinished part of our basement, which has concrete floors and studded walls and is warm, until we could figure out exactly what to do with him. Keeping him was out of the question because we already have a dog that does not appreciate competition. And, again, we’re NOT cat people. We intended to keep him fed and warm until the next day when animal control could pick him up. That day turned into four, and we were on the verge of finding out a way to peacefully introduce him to our dog and make him part of the family. That was until he vomited and more than food came up.
It turned out our little stray cat, a black-and-white tuxedo with the loving temperament of a saint, had roundworm and whip worm, apparently common enough for strays, but very uncommon in our house, so I’m not ashamed to admit there was a degree of panic involved in this discovery. Without haste, we had the cat picked up by animal control, who assured us he’d be well taken care of and adopted out. We were sad to see him go but not the worms he carried, so after he was gone, we set to the task of cleaning and learning everything we could about these creepy, crawly parasites.
The plot thickened when we found out that roundworm is a form of nematode and is also considered a zoonotic parasite, which means humans can catch it. Panic increased.
We were assured by several vets that the odds of catching the roundworm infection from the cat was slim, but we wanted to play on the safe side and started dosing ourselves with pumpkin seeds (which paralyzes roundworms), papaya seeds (which kills them), and pineapple juice (which burns them). In our research, we discovered we were performing a rather normal worm cleanse many people do on a regular to semi-regular basis, seeing that according to numerous experts in this field of research, most people have some form of nematode in their bodies.
After a few days of detox, we thought we were in the clear until I discovered on Christmas Eve, of all the eves of the year, no less, that I had a roundworm infection. I’ll spare you the details of how I discovered this (and you’ll thank me for it). The only important detail to note is that I was horrified. The idea of something (or worse, somethingsāplural) crawling (or slithering) around inside me brought back images of John Hurt screaming on a table over 35 years ago with something bumping out of his stomach. And the infection didn’t come from the cat either because the gestation period of a roundworm egg is longer than the amount of time we had the cat.
This discovery plunged us into more research, which turned up a range of health issues related to intestinal parasitic infections, some symptoms of which I had for a length of time.
I’m not sure where I picked up the infection (and it seems the infection was limited to just me, my wife and dog were not infected), but since relieving myself of these worms, I’ve had several health improvements, including better respiratory function, clearer skin, and lower irritability, among others.
There isn’t enough room to discuss a nematode infection at length here. Not to mention I’m not a health expert or health-related journalist (like the Sun Day’s Joanie Koplos), and therefore, I feel I’m not qualified to delve into the topic in full or start dispensing medical advice, but I feel it would be wise for many people to determine if they have an intestinal parasitic infection, which is easy enough to fix and comes with a range of health benefits in doing so. Well, easy enough in most cases. Not so easy if you’re infected with an alien, however. Thankfully, I wasn’t infected with an alien…yet.
