Tuesday 1 February 2011

The Worms

Husband came home from the vet yesterday with some devastating news: little Pablo has worms.  Monolithic Dog-Eating Roundworms, to be precise.

O God.

I have an amazingly strong stomach.  As a nurse, it's a plus - I've smelled C diff, GI bleeds, been splattered with blood from a yanked IV, been vomited on, peed on, and have had amniotic fluid splashed on me.  Not once have I been squeamish or nauseated.

However.

Worms freak me out.  Husband has been doing a great job of taking care of the doggie business the last 24 hours (one parasite, which was Zombie-white and looked nearly eight inches long, had wrapped itself around Pablo's poo and I swear to Baby Jesus it was still moving) and has promised to come immediately home from work should Pablo poop and evict more helminths.  However, since the Epic Infestation of Pablo the Demon Dog of Dongducheon has been brought to my attention, I've realized something else.

1. Parasitic infestations happen often in humans.
2. They happen even more often in underdeveloped/Third World countries
3. I have plans to go work in one of the aforementioned underdeveloped/Third World countries (specifically Bolivia)
4. Some of my patients will have helminth infections; i.e. Monolithic Human-Eating Roundworms.

O God.

Hoping to de-sensitize myself to images of freaky host-consuming worms, I googled "endemic diseases in Bolivia" and came across the following:
Chagas disease
Shistosomiasis
hookworms
Leishmaniasis
Filariasis
Taeniasis
Ascariasis

ALL WORMS.


Then I came across a slew of videos on YouTube called Monsters Inside Me.  These videos have catchy names like "Deadliest Parasite on the Planet" and "Invincible Brain-Eating Monster" and "Death by Tsetse Fly".

So now not only are my dreams of bringing free healthcare and happiness to Bolivians being dashed to pieces, but I have Pine-Sol'ed and disinfected every inch of the living room, play room, and kitchen, my fingers look like shriveled figs (but they smell wonderful), and Husband is laughing at me because I had to send him a tearful text about Pablo's poop moving and can he please please please come home, because THIS THING is about to come out of my dog:


AND I'm out of Pine-Sol.

5 comments:

Ashlee said...

HAHAHA. I love you. :) Is it sad that I knew how to pronounce every one of those diseases?! Poor Pablo, hopefully he feels better too!

Stacey said...

You know what? Most puppies have these kind of worms at least once in life. They get it from mom's milk as a matter of fact.
It's not a big deal, but I agree. That shit is nasty. And yes, they can still be alive when they're passed, so you very well may have seen it wiggling.
Ugh.
I'm like you, the blood and the guts and all that doesn't bother me so much, but worms are just nasty. We had a pharmaceutical rep bring in pictures of human worm infestations. THAT was probably one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.
YUCK!
Get that puppy started on heartworm prevention (Heartgard or Interceptor or something like that.) It's a broad intestinal parasite prevention preventing roundworms, hookworms and heartworms. The only thing it won't prevent is tapeworms - which they get from eating fleas. Tapeworms looks like little pieces of rice in the stool. If you see these, you'll have to get a RX from your vet for a wormer.
Wow. I'm a dork.

SuziG said...

Like you, I can handle blood, gore, puke, and poop. I think it's a pre-requisite for being a Mommy really. Of course, with you and Stacey, it's required for your career. ;)
However, I cannot handle things like... THAT.
My WORST fear is to have a tapeworm. I know I'm a dork. Lol. I don't why/how I came up with it, but it's my biggest fear. Other than clowns. Maybe we should infest all clowns with tapeworms. Hmm... that's a thought.

blackberry said...

I can't handle worms that have come out of butt holes, that is SO gross!! Especially if they're still moving around in the poop! *yuck*

On a side note, that show Monsters Inside Me makes me want to cringe! This guy had a worm inside of his BRAIN!! It traveled through his system and made a HOME in it! Ewww!

Aleah said...

I know! Husband came home from work and saw what I'd been typing into the search engine (like "gigantic worms" and "people killed by worms") and decided to make fun of me for the rest of the night. Gah. Freaks me out.