Intestinal Worms: Not Awful but Surreptitious

Dirt and Worms (CC photo attrib)

The night-shift doctor cheerfully informed me on Thursday that once again I have contracted Ascaris Doctorchickenscratchisuniversal otherwise known as Roundworm. I first heard of the details underlying intestinal worms from the Bio/Micro/Zoology course students at Uni and remember being disgusted and amused by their complexity of assault on the human physiology.
 

Identification involves a swab from a “marble sized” waste globule secured in a sturdy receptacle resembling a match box, stained for contrast. The eviction involves three days and six pink chew pills, all in all not so bad. The second day of treatment seems to include a fever and generally crazy immune response as to be expected from leaches being poisoned from their firm stations, with their able counter-immuno manipulations of my body disabled. All week previous I slept 2-4 hours more than normal, generally interfering with my frantic pre-semester sysadminning duties with my Solaris systems but thankfully not with my rigorous hiking regime I’ll cover later. I suspect they’d been around for at least four weeks prior while they slowly built in strength and energy draining capabilities to their doom.
 

I swear I’ve been taking every possible precaution: bleaching fruits with edible skins, peeling tomatoes, filtering & boiling water for ten whole minutes, all for naught. Well, there was that one bunch of Concorde grapes… Still, I was mildly amused when the US had the recent outbreak of food-skin-borne bacteria, all in a days work in The Rest of the World.
 

Health Positives:

• Doctor bill + medication: less than $3, uninsured cost; 35 minutes after work.
• haven’t had more than a few hours of flu in almost a year, maybe the standard-PC-issue flu shot works?
• Having real energy to spearhead projects again after weeks of none is like a longer-term adrenalin shot.