In rural Virginia, a woman calls for help as her daughter is severely affected by a parasitic worm infestation. The “maggot-like” worms have left pustules in their wake, and caused symptoms of itching, burning, and sensations of something crawling under her skin.

First and foremost, we must stress that we will neither be able to identify the worms, nor provide medical advice as this situation is purely medical in nature. We are not medical professionals, and thus it is beyond our capabilities to provide medical advice. In addition to this, even if we were qualified to diagnose our reader with what worm is plaguing her daughter, she did not provide us with any images, which makes identifying the worm all the more difficult.

Secondly, for the sake of other readers, we think it is important to include the rest of the context our reader provided, as we feel there is much to be taken away from this. According to our reader, her 37 year old daughter caught these worms in trying to rid her dogs of fleas. When doing this, the fleas left the dogs and started to bite her and created the aforementioned problem. Although it is rare for fleas to feed on humans, they can carry parasites, so it is hard to say if these really were fleas or not.

Nonetheless, upon discovering the other worms inside her body, the condition “rapidly escalated”, spreading to more parts of our reader’s daughter. Because of this, they went to the emergency room, where doctors took our reader’s daughter to be a methamphetamine addict. They even took a blood test for meth, which yielded a false positive as a result of the medication she was on (Dimenhydrinate and Sudafed). Hence, the doctors turned away their patient, certain that she was on drugs, rather than that she was infested with parasites, and did no further examinations. Our reader then took her daughter to the clinic, where they prescribed her with Ivermectin to eliminate worms. While it worked to a certain extent, it was apparently not effective enough, as now the condition has become so extreme that our reader’s daughter has taken to attempting to “‘surgically'” remove the worms herself using a variety of medicines and tools. As an elderly woman with her own health concerns, our reader is understandably not able to get near her daughter in the fear of catching the parasite.

What we advise our reader to do is to do a Google search for “infectious disease specialist in Virginia” and/or “travel disease specialist Virginia.” As our reader and her daughter have clearly not been able to get satisfactory answers and treatment from doctors at the hospital and clinic, they may want to turn to other professionals that are qualified to give a medical opinion on the matter. In fact, we urge our reader to look for an infectious disease specialist. We understand that it has been some time now before our reader submitted her query, and we hope that her daughter has moved away from trying to remove the worms herself and that she has received proper help.

There are many lessons to be taken from this for any and all readers. The first is to not underestimate the possibility of an anomaly. Although fleas rarely feed on humans, it is entirely possible that this happened in this case. We have even written in multiple articles that people need not worry about fleas for their own safety, but irregularities do exist. Furthermore, while we should be able to trust in our doctors, sometimes we can encounter ones that let us down, or do not provide satisfactory help. It is completely acceptable to not be pleased with the service at a hospital, and to find help elsewhere. Additionally, seeking help from other qualified people or sources is entirely valid. As we said, we urge our reader to consult a parasite specialist in this case. Most importantly, we do not encourage anyone to ever attempt to medically treat themselves, let alone perform surgery on themselves. This will, in most cases, do more harm than good, and you can cause serious damage that will only worsen your condition.

In conclusion, we recommend that our reader does a Google search for an infectious disease specialist in her area and consult them. If she and her daughter are not satisfied with the help they get there either, then move on and try to find someone else. What is most important is that our reader’s daughter can be rid of these parasites and live comfortably again.

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