Parasites plague this reader, who recently contacted us about her battle with parasitic “bugs” over the past two years. She worries about her health and ability to take care of her family, and has reached out to us for help, stating “please guide me to recovery before it takes me from my husband and 4 beautiful sons.”

To hear such words from anyone is distressing and emotional, to say the least, and we sympathize with our reader and her struggles. We will try our best to help her throughout this article, though it must first be pointed out that we will not be able to provide an identification of the parasites inside her. This is because we are not medical professionals, and thus we are not qualified to provide any medical advice. All we can do is point our reader in the right direction, but we hope that that will help nonetheless. We also wish to provide a trigger warning for our other readers; this article will touch upon mental illness, parasitic infections underneath the skin and feelings of hopelessness.

As mentioned, our reader has been struggling with these parasites for years. She went to her doctor and E.R. staff, but she was turned away with “a look” “to say she must be mental”. We are saddened to hear this, and unfortunately this is quite common, that people who come to their doctors with a parasitic infection are refused help or are not believed. This is because typically doctors do not receive training in parasitic infection and are thus neither capable of identifying the parasite, nor treating it. That is not to say that it gives any doctor the excuse to scorn their patients, as that is just bad practice. Our reader reports feelings of embarrassment and does not want to “push the issue” with her doctor after receiving her treatments for depression and anemia.

In fact, she thinks her depression is linked to the worms taking “advantage” of her, “or vice versa”, implying that perhaps the parasites are contributing to her depression. “This war with the parasites is picking me apart little by little. I used to be beautiful, confident and a better mom and wife” our reader tells us. We leave these words in here as a testament to how serious parasitic infections are, and how they affect one physically, mentally and emotionally. If any of our readers has cause to believe they are infected with a parasite, we urge them to seek treatment as soon as possible. No amount of money is paramount to your health, physical and mental. Now, in terms of how our reader is affected physically, our reader is confident that the parasites are in her eyes, nose, neck and “throat area”, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulder blades, back, groin, “front/back of knees”, ankles and the tops and bottoms of her feet.

So, what can we advise our reader to do? The guidance we can give our reader is to point her in a few directions she can go that are alternative to visiting her doctor. Obviously, the most important thing is for our reader to get an accurate diagnosis and proper treatment. To do this, we recommend consulting a specialist who actually does know parasitic infections and would be able to help with just this problem. In order to find one, our reader can do a Google search for ‘infectious disease physician (name of her closest big city)’ or ‘travel disease doctor (name of her closest big city)’. It might also help to bring some samples. Additionally, she could even already bring some opinions on the parasites’ identity to her consultation, if possible. By taking a sample of the parasites to her local county extension office or the entomology department of her nearest university, she could get another qualified opinion on what they are. Of course, we are not sure if the universities in our reader’s region are still open due to the pandemic, but county extension offices should still be open.

To conclude, we hope that this article was informative for our reader, and that it could help somewhat. We sympathize with her, and wish we could do more, but alas, matters like these have to be taken care of by medical professionals. We also hope that this article may have served as a wake-up call for any other readers who have perhaps been struggling with parasites for a long time but not tried to seek help, or has been enlightening for those who have tried, but have been refused help by their doctors. We wish our reader the very best and hope that she recovers soon.