I once read that actress Kristin Bell, husband, Dax Shepard and their five year daughter weathered a pinworm infestation. Admittedly, I had to Google what pinworms were and not surprising it invokes dookie and not washing your hands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that pinworms are small thin white roundworms that live in the colon and rectum of humans. Pinworms can be contracted if you swallow or breathe in the eggs which is reason number 374 on why you should pass on anilingus. Monsters Inside Me is full of stories of worms that get past the skin and set up shop in and among your organs.
Most people on the show pick up parasites from eating a local delicacy in a foreign country like pork sushi or having eggs laid in an open wound by a flying insect. Others get harmful bacteria such as giardia from swimming in lukewarm pea green pond water with a fresh open wound. A few contract life threatening infections from their pets.
Turns out your mother was right. Many of these bodily invasions could’ve been avoided if the person simply washed their hands, but today with our busy schedules some of us forgo basic hygiene in favor of parasites invading our money parts. I used to sit outside the men's room when I worked in a cube farm. Not only did I bear witness to the sounds of bodily functions, I also heard the sink come on afterwards. I had a spreadsheet entitled, "Men I Work With Who Don't Wash Their Hands After Taking a Dump." I'm sorry to report that half the dudes at my former company were brought up wrong.
Humans in pain generally behave in the same manner so the show tends to follow kind of an unintentional script. First there is a symptom, usually irritated skin, a red swollen bump, often something itches like a bitch. The protagonist ignores the irritation for several weeks before they opt for the medical wheel of fortune with a $30 copay. The first line doctor usually diagnoses sinusitis and prescribes a useless course of antibiotics that cost another $30 at the pharmacy. The hapless person soldiers on for another two weeks when puss and a bad smell emerge. A second trip to the emergency room causes medical personnel to call in the infectious disease doc who takes one look at the infected area and says,
“That’s a botfly.”
Unfortunately, they're not referring to crypto currency. Next comes the tweezers to extract the larvae, preferably whole so as not to cause a secondary infection from decaying botfly parts. Usually the show ends happily with only a partial limb amputation.
The biggest roadblock to getting adequate treatment is usually the insurance copay. One time I brought my son, Aidan, into the emergency room after hours for what we thought was an ear infection. The guy over the partition was in excruciating pain. The nurse kept asking questions like,
“Are your hands clammy?”
To which the dude would scream,
“It’s my left nut!”
She asked, "On a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst, how would you rate you pain?"
"I think my left nut is going to explode!" he screamed.
"So like an eight then?" nurse person asked.
I know women are better at taking pain than men but an eight for a ball rupture? She then asked,
“How long has this been going on?”
I suspected that his left gonad had become inverted knotting the plumbing. The good news is it’s treatable if caught early.
“Six weeks!” The dude screamed.
Aidan and I looked at each other with matching expressions of horror. The copay likely cost this guy one of his testicles. So it did its job by delaying the medical insurance claim long enough so that the patient almost died.
In a recent show I learrned that not all parasites come from exotic places. One woman had a bacterial infection that she got from her dog. After unitentionally sunburning the tops of her feet, she let her dog lick her red skin. I'm sure you've heard that dogs have something in their saliva that is great for healing wounds. Turns out that medical science has determined that this is entirely false. In fact, one in four dogs has a bacteria in its mouth which humans have no defense for. After picking up more than her share of vitamin D, toasting her feet at the beach, the woman drew the short straw on the deadly dog bouche bacteria. Both her feet had to be amputated. At the end of the show, she appeared footless with the dog in her lap as she said,
"So now I use plenty of sunblock."
That's good, I guess, but if I lost part of my body from microbes from my dog's mouth, I'd put Dinkles in the glove box of the next car Elon Musk's planned to put into orbit. Her dog likely suffered from coprohagia, the scientific term for dookie eating. Yes, scientists have studied that too.
Doctor Benjamin Hart, from the University of California, Davis, presented a study in 2012 at the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior annual conference which revealed that one in four dogs are casual feces feasters. Not surprisingly this corresponds to the same data about dogs with nasty flesh-eating bacteria in their mouths. Hart wrote,
"So now I use plenty of sunblock."
That's good, I guess, but if I lost part of my body from microbes from my dog's mouth, I'd put Dinkles in the glove box of the next car Elon Musk's planned to put into orbit. Her dog likely suffered from coprohagia, the scientific term for dookie eating. Yes, scientists have studied that too.
Doctor Benjamin Hart, from the University of California, Davis, presented a study in 2012 at the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior annual conference which revealed that one in four dogs are casual feces feasters. Not surprisingly this corresponds to the same data about dogs with nasty flesh-eating bacteria in their mouths. Hart wrote,
"Our conclusion is that eating of fresh stools is a reflection of an innate predisposition of ancestral canids living in nature that protects pack members from intestinal parasites present in feces that could occasionally be dropped in the den/rest area."
Or maybe some dogs are just nuts and like to eat their own shit.
Animal Planet’s Monsters Inside Me is an educational program that advises frequent hand washing, using bug spray with DEET, and seeing a doctor once symptoms appear. Just remember to insist on the infectious disease guy in lieu of the on call general practitioner who is just going to blame it on “something going around” and advise you to push fluids.
Pony up the copay and insist that they pull out their text books and study up, and for God sakes, let the doctor's know if you've been out of the country especially South America or Africa. I'm sure these continents are very nice, but it seems like they're just teaming with insects that want to lay eggs in your eye. Also ignoring pain is not a good idea. Pain is there to tell you something has gone awry. When coupled with violent upchucking, go to the emergency room right away. You're probably not going to get better if you "wait just one more day." You need drugs and tweezers and likely a scalpel. You can learn a lot from Monsters Inside Me, stuff that will save your life. If you remember just one thing, let it be this.
Don’t soldier through pain because it is highly likely that a parasite is soldiering through your pancreas.
Editor's Note: Originally posted on April 24, 2018.
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