“My boyfriend hasn’t been feeling well the last couple of days,” starts this reader in her submission. She states that she “would like to try to ID the worm”, and while we will not be able to do this for her, we will nonetheless do our best to respond to her boyfriend’s situation with helpful information.
The reason we will not be able to identify the worm that is plaguing our reader’s boyfriend is because we are not medical professionals. It would take someone who is medically qualified to identify a creature that is causing symptoms, as that identification would become a diagnosis, and thereby the basis for deciding what treatment is necessary. What we can do, in this situation, is recommend some places he can go to seek such a diagnosis.
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So, what we can recommend is that our reader and her boyfriend do one or more of the following:
1) Search for a medical parasitologist in their area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.
Moving on, we still find it important to lay out the context of this situation, as other readers who share a similar experience might find themselves in need/want of a check up with a medical parasitologist as well. Our reader and her boyfriend live in central Florida and are very active outdoors. They have been to “many different environments within the past week, such as springs, the beach” and the woods. Symptoms such as vomiting and congestion have affected her boyfriend for the past couple of days, and, on the morning that she wrote to us, he had spit out what appeared to be a small, black, round worm. “It was maybe 2-3 millimetres” (around 1/10-inch), and “did not appear to be segmented.” The creature was slimy and moved like an earthworm. He has been to urgent care, but the worm was not identified.
If and when our reader’s boyfriend speaks with a medical parasitologist, we urge him to tell them all of the same information, and even provide photographs, if possible. This will potentially make the process of diagnosing the problem easier and faster.
To conclude, we are not qualified to identify the creature that is bothering our reader’s boyfriend, but we hope that the resources listed above come to use. We wish them both the very best!
All About Worms is always free, always reader-supported, we don't subject you to ads or annoying video pop-ups. But it does cost us money out of our pocket to keep the site going (nearly 20 years so far!) So your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP Publishing.