Ghosts, Goblins & Things That Will Actually Kill You

I love Halloween, which is why I'm sitting at home alone, wearing my festive ghost-print pajama pants, tea in hand, writing this blog entry. As I sit here, eating my unfestive leftovers and unexciting salad, I'm laughing to myself. NPR is posting ghost stories, Buzzfeed posted "10 creepy photos from Halloweens Past", and articles like "13 Real Animals Lifted Directly Out of Your Nightmares" [cracked.com] are actively being read.

So, I'm giggling to myself, pushing my food around in the bowl thinking, "how can I write a blog entry about things that are already halloween-esque?" This is a challenge for me, because I am not a fan of horror films. I know, you'd think someone who dedicates their life to viruses, parasites, and other creepy crawlies would be excited by the thought of paying $12 to go watch two hours of ghouls and scantily-clad ladies screaming... but I'm not.

Then I found this list of the 10 Scariest Horror Movie Characters (also on Buzzfeed, which is oddly addicting if you avoid all the celebrity gossip and pseudo health advice). While I have only seen one of these movies, I think I can match all of these horror movie characters with real horror. So here we go...

1. Exorcist Girl? Ebola

Sure, I haven't seen this movie, but I can recognize all the references from pea soup to spinning heads. There are parasites that take over their hosts' brain functions, but that's mostly seen in smaller animal models or with prion diseases (which are not parasites). Want to read about Ebola? Check out one of my past entry here.

2. Leatherface?  Leprosy.

 Leprosy is a really unfortunate infection that is fortunately curable when discovered early. Read up on it here.

3. Creepy Girl from Quarantine?  Hookworms.

Nothing says sexy like gnashing teeth.

4. Jason Vorheese?  Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis

Both Jason and Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis are found lurking in lakes and pools of water, and both will make you crazy. 

5. Old Man from The Unborn? Hobo Spiders.

My partner called my attention to these baby hand-sized wonders. Apparently, he used to wake up to them crawling on his chest, and the males also are very territorial and will charge at you and chase you around a room.

6. Pennywise from It the Clown? Tapeworm.

Both Pennywise the Clown and tapeworms lives amongst poop and eat your insides. The similarities are uncanny! Read about fun tapeworms here!

7. Freddy Kruger?  Bedbugs.

 ...because they get you in your sleep! Here's an older post about bedbugs that will make you want to sleep with one eye open.

8. The Girl from the Ring? Onchocerciasis.

 Onchocerciasis is the clinical term for "River Blindness", which is a disease caused by an infectious roundworm. This one is a bit of a stretch, I know, but that girl has creepy eyes.

9. Michael Meyers?  MRSA.

One of the latest things in medical news is drug resistance. Much like Michael Meyers, MRSA just wont die!

10. Old lady from Legion? 

Three Words: Ellen Albertini Dow

Happy Halloween!

Tales of the WebMD's Symptom Checker (and it's blatant inaccuracies)

After a fun weekend spent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my family, I woke up this morning feeling terribly ill. I generally consider myself to be in good health; I rarely get sick, and when I do, my symptomatic stage only lasts briefly before recovery. 

With that being said, I am a total hypochondriac. I know far too much about diseases, and I'm constantly driving my friends, coworkers and family members crazy with my static state of worry. Headache? Must be a brain aneurism. Back pain? Herniated disc. Tired? Must be cancer. Botulism. Sun stroke. Gangrene.


 

This kid is the best part of the movie "The Switch".

So, let's back up a bit. On Thursday or Friday, a lady at my place of employment returned from being sick with "a cold". She still sounded awful, but we've all experienced that residual upper respiratory gunk at the end of a sickness. I'm mentioning her because I'm pretty sure she was my introduction, my infector of sorts. Yet, it could have been anyone (...but it was probably her).

Friday, nothing. I felt fine. I finished out a stupid week at work, and went home for date night.

Saturday, great. Went to the aquarium, touched a lot of things. Washed my hands a lot.

Sunday, I woke up feeling a bit off. I had a sore throat, but was it because I had slept with my mouth open? Did my nasal cavities drain into my throat? Eh, I'll walk it off. Went to lunch got my hair done (I know, so glamorous), and felt tired whilst doing so (maybe I was relaxed? I don't know), but no trace of a sore throat. By the time I made it home (eh, 5ish?), I was beat, my throat was sore, and I was developing a headache.

So, I did what any normal person would do. I made some soup. Ate 4 cloves of raw garlic. Made some ginger tea, squeezed an entire lemon into it. Gargled with salt water, repeatedly. Took my vitamins. Stayed hydrated. Peed a billion times. Went to bed (relatively) early.

Usually that regimen works, but this morning, I woke up SICK. Symptoms: mild fever (which is pretty odd for me, as i usually run a bit cooler than the typical body temp), terribly sore throat, and weepy, crusty eye. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong.

Yea, what? Weepy, crusty eye?

I called out sick to work because I'm not willing to infect anyone else (because that's just rude!), and went back to sleep to try to "sleep it off". If you know me at all, you'll already know that me going back to sleep is quite a feat in itself. I'm a "up at 6" type of person, but I managed to knock myself out until 9:30 AM. Then, I called my partner to drum up some sympathy. This is exactly what he said to me:

"Weepy, gross eye? Uh oh, you know what that sounds like? Pink eye. Do you know how you get pink eye? From going to aquariums, touching all the railings that all the gross little kids touched with their little, fecal contaminated hands and then rubbing your gross hands all over your eyes."

 

I've never had pink eye... but I am a chronic eye-rubber...and I did touch a lot of railings that day.

Remember when I tweeted about not allowing pants in my bed? Yea...

Long story short, it's not pink eye. That conversation happened 5 hours ago, and everything is already feeling better (because my immune system is AWESOME).

But, for fun, I decided to check WebMD's symptom checker. I did this a few months ago when I had an odd kidney pain (which ended up being just muscle soreness, but thanks for asking), and my results were either a bruise...or kidney failure.

So, of course, conjunctivitis (or pink eye) was on the list of possible illnesses, but so was blindness. It's best to be thorough?

But then I thought, why aren't there any parasites on that list? So I checked all the symptoms. I said my eyes were bleeding, yellow, pink, red, itchy, droopy, etc. For all they know, my eyes were falling out of their sockets. Even after I checked some severe symptoms, the website didn't tell me to contact a doctor or to call emergency medical services. What a horrible website!

There are many parasites that can affect your eye tissues and sight. Some are caused by nematodes, others are caused by single-cell parasites. The range of symptoms these parasites can cause are incredible! Best of all, we do have (most of) them in the United States!

get it out, get it out, get it out! (Parasitic roundworm)

The parasite in the following video is called Acanthamoeba keratitis.



Cases of this particular parasitic infection are often seen in people who wear contact lenses and mix their own contact solution. A. keratitis has to be introduced directly to your cornea for infection to occur, which is easy to do if you are mixing your own contact solution with tap water that contains the trophozoite phase of A. keratitis.

Of course, since its relatively easy to become infected with A. keratitis, it's relatively difficult to treat. Medical treatment with medicated eye drops and antiparasitic medications usually fail, which leaves surgical treatment. So, maybe just go head and spend that extra $4 to buy packaged contact solution?

Moral of this story? My local UPS guy could probably diagnose anyone better than the WebMD Symptom Checker.

Anonymous Worms Contest

I've received some rather interesting emails lately, now that the blog is starting to circulate a bit more (how that's happening, I'm not really sure!)

Before I tell you about the best email I've received yet, I'd like to briefly mention that I've won a "featured blog" award for a rather random site and received a rather awesome Follow Friday shout out on twitter from Nikon Small World Photography Competition. Weee!

This morning, however, I realized I had been neglecting my microscopic.blog@gmail.com account. Waiting for me, patiently, was an email from reader Denna from the UK. She writes:

Ok, I know I should let this go. Forget about it. But I can't; I am totally grossed out by what was in my sink this morning (attached). 

I assume it's some kinda tapeworm? But where the fricking hell did it come from? I keep a very clean kitchen. In fact there are those who think I'm obsessive compulsive about keeping the kitchen clean. I am a rigorous vegetarian and an almost vegan (no milk no cheese) and have been for twenty years. The only meat that ever enters my flat is in cat food tins, and I only buy one brand...

Denna details her morning about eating coffee and toast, and later going back for some oatmeal. As someone who can eat oatmeal for days on end, I like this girl already! Additionally, she's a borderline vegan who knows that its cruel to force house cats to acclimate to a vegetarian diet, as their species requires meat for survival. +100 points for Denna! She continues...

I placed the oatmeal pan in the sink to fill it with water and that's when I saw the tapeworm. There was water in the metal lipped dish from when I rinsed the cat food tin. I was gobsmacked. And I felt seriously sick imagining where it came from. The only place I can figure is the cat food tin. It was a newly opened tin - I popped the ring pull this morning - could a tapeworm survive in an anaerobic tin of food? I guess it could since they live inside animals. Ugh!! But wouldn't factory processing kill it? I kept the little bastard on my windowsill all day in the dish just to convince myself it was indeed a parasite. It must be - it didn't drown it just kept swimming round like some freaking miniature Loch Ness monster. There was a tiny bit of cat food in the dish and it knotted its lower half around the food while its head snorkelled around. Christ, honestly it was worse than imagining what was in that Maryland forest in the Blair Witch Project. Totally totally repellant. 

A few years ago, I camped in that same forest in Maryland where the Blair Witch Project was filmed -- no joke. It was very beautiful, and I'm sad to report that there were no witches, or tapeworms, to be found.

Finally around 5pm I picked the dish up and hurled the contents against the garden wall. The little bastard is probably out there now negotiating his way back into the kitchen. Or worse, he's waiting for one of my cats to go out there so he can crawl up their backside and introduce himself and his billion offspring into my flat.

Wrong type of worm, Denna. Tapeworms don't usually enter the anus... That would be characteristic of a pinworm, which exits its host's anus each evening to lay eggs on the perianal tissue (skin between the anus and genitals). But either way, its a fun image, right?! This is definitely not a pinworm...so what is it!?

So you're the expert - can you tell me what this is and how it might have got in my sink?! BTW, it was about 3 1/4 inches long. And red. And horrible, disgusting and gross. And I am never eating out of that yellow dish again. Seriously.

Dena said the magic words: "You're the expert". Heart a'flutter! I'm sure she wont like it when I mock her fear of eating off of the yellow dish by posting this video of Bear Grylls eating a giant larvae (beware, not for the weak-stomached or the faint-hearted). 

That man will put anything in his mouth, and drinks his own urine like its gatorade.

So why don't we play a little game? I've already responded to Denna Dearest, but I'm going to post the photos, and YOU see if you can identify who Denna's special friend is. 

The first person to get it right will get a super awesome & artsy/science-y prize!

Email your guesses to microscopic.blog@gmail.com and I'll announce the winner in my next entry!