“I have some kind of mite or worm under my skin and need help finding out what it is”, is all this reader states in his submission, which is also lacking in photos. Generally speaking, it is incredibly difficult for us to identify organisms without sufficient context or photos, but in this case, we will unfortunately not be able to help our reader in any case. This is because the mite or worm that our reader found is under his skin, and in any situation where organisms are found in someone’s body, we must assume that this is a potential medical concern. As such, we cannot make an identification, as doing so would be tantamount to making a diagnosis, and since we are not medical professionals, this is a service we are neither qualified nor legally able to provide.

With most medical concerns, one’s natural instinct is to go to their primary care doctor. Usually, this is a good instinct, but when it comes to organisms found in the body (which could potentially be parasitic), primary care doctors are usually not trained in the field of parasitology and are thus not equipped to diagnose and treat such issues. Now, one would then hope that their primary care doctor would refer one to a specialist who would be able to treat the issue, but unfortunately that is often not the case. Though we cannot explain the reason for this past mere speculation, many of our readers who have consulted their primary care doctors about parasite concerns have been turned away and sometimes even called crazy or delusional, without any real medical inspections being done. This should not happen, but it does, and for that reason, we tend to instead recommend that our readers who are concerned about parasites (or organisms affecting the body in any way) consult a medical parasitologist.

A medical parasitologist is a specialist in the field of parasites, and is trained to identify and treat them. Past readers have had much more positive experiences consulting a medical parasitologist about parasite concerns, as these physicians will actually take such concerns seriously. As such, what we can recommend is that our reader 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.

In conclusion, we hope that our reader is able to speak with a medical parasitologist soon to find out what it is he is dealing with. On top of that, we recommend that he provide his physician with more context surrounding the situation: when he thinks the problem started, how it feels, and what symptoms he is experiencing. Of course, the physician will ask whatever questions he needs to know the answers to, but these things are still worth thinking about prior to a consultation so that our reader can get the most out of the consultation and get help as fast as possible. We hope this helps, and we wish him the very best!