Gross Diseases

One of our favorite diseases to talk about here (especially with visitors) is the Mango worm. Although it sounds like a joke, this worm burrows into clothes and sheets while they are drying outside. It then burrows into the skin and develops into an itching welt. It grows inside the skin to produce young. The innovative treatment sounds even more like a joke: it is to lay a piece of bacon across the welt. The worm burrows into the bacon fat and can be peeled out. Avoidance includes using a dryer or an iron on laundry to kill the eggs instead of air drying. On our rural clinics we've been staying at local places, and last night Dr. Hall realized what he thought was a mosquito bite was a Mango worm. We had to inject lidocaine because it was itching so bad it kept him from sleeping. I'm not sure if he'll get on the airplane with a piece of bacon wrapped around his elbow or just use some scotch tape. I was going to enter it into Typhon for documentation for school, but I can't find the ICD code for Mango worm or "Bacon placement".

Many of my patients over the last few days have "worms" as their complaint. They feel itchy and attribute it to worms. Others have a sore throat and attribute it to worms crawling up. Basically my patients over the last few days have attributed almost any symptom to worms. I try to get more information on treating their symptoms because often it's from another cause. But while I'm on the subject of tropical diseases I'll write some on Ascaris, the most common parasite here. Ascaris, hookworm, is a result of infected stools making their way to water or food and are ingested by humans. When they enter the blood stream they hatch and can cause general itching. The young worms travel to the lungs and can sometimes cause cough while the worms crawls up through the windpipe, slide down into the esophagus, and feast in the intestine.
Roundworms in the intestines can cause indegestion, discomfort, and weakness from the anemia from blood-loss. On rare, but memorable, occasion the worms can come out of the stools or crawl out through the mouth or nose. One 400mg tablet of Albendazole kills the worms. These were handed out to most patients.