A woman who has been struggling with what she believes to be parasites has contacted us with her story. She does not ask any questions, but simply wants to share some sentiments regarding people suffering from parasitic infections.

As we said, our reader does not ask us any questions, and that is because she is aware that we cannot answer questions regarding whether or not a certain organism is a parasite, and she is completely right about this. Since we are not medical professionals, we can indeed not identify parasites, as doing so would be the same as providing a diagnosis.

That said, our reader has been asking herself for 13 months if the organism bothering her is a parasite or not. “I know I’m not crazy, as some believe me to be,” she states. She says that certain “petty” people will just regard her as a “mental case,” and they are unable to see that parasitic conditions are “not rare”. She continues: “Instead of standing with us, they stand against us, pointing fingers and calling names. They could care less.”

She states that many people will dismiss parasitic infections as imaginary because they cannot see them, which makes them ignorant. She also went to the emergency room, but the doctor did not inspect her or run any tests. Instead, he “laughed, saying there was nothing alive crawling in” our reader.

“Shame on those who don’t help solve this,” she states. “People should help each other, not tuck their tails between their legs and whimper. I’ve never been so alone in my life. This has been the scariest thing I’ve had to do alone. I’ve had panic attacks from nearly day one. Whatever this is, living in, on and around me, has terrified me.”

We understand her frustration, and we wish her to know that she is not alone in this feeling. Many past readers have felt ignored, and have had their problems dismissed, even by doctors. Usually, when it comes to doctors who dismiss claims of parasitic infections, they have actually not received training in medical parasitology, and so they are unequipped to deal with that sort of situation. That is not to say that laughing at patients and dismissing their concerns outright is justified.

“It is starting to leave marks as it becomes bigger. They come from every pore in my body, my sinuses, and they are under my nails and in my hair. […] I have deep looking wrinkles that aren’t wrinkles at all.”

Our reader should know that we do not think she is crazy, and we take her story very seriously. We recommend that our reader consult a medical parasitologist instead of an ER doctor or her primary care doctor. Medical parasitologists are physicians that specialize in parasitic infections, so they will be better equipped to diagnose and treat this sort of issue, and they will take our reader seriously. So, what we can recommend is that our reader do one or more of the following:

1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her 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.
Whichever option she goes for, we urge our reader to share any and all information with her physician, including the symptoms she told us.

To conclude, we do wish we could help our reader more with her situation, and we understand her frustration. With that said, we still hope that the resources above may come to use and that our reader can get the help she desires as soon as possible. We also hope that by sharing her story, she might have helped any other readers who can relate to her situation. We wish her the very best.