Parasites 'N' Me! A History.

Warning: this post contains copious amounts of icky. You may come away scratching yourself. Not for the faint of heart. But then, if that describes you, you wouldn't be on this blog anyway.

Hi! I'm Kristin. And I'll be your host (HA!) through this historic journey. If at any point you feel the need to throw up, I totally don't blame you.

When I was four I was a little dirt digger. I had a fun hobby of collecting ants from the back yard and placing them in my roller skate wheel. I'd place the skate on its side and then spin the wheel to give the ants a 'ride', like their own little amusement park. Sometimes the ants would fly out and I'd have to gather them and put them back in. It was my understanding that ants liked to be entertained in this way, and that I was doing something to make their mundane lives more fun. By my side was always my faithful black lab, Samantha. I have very distinct memories of sitting outside with Sam during this time, and feeding her ice pops. What I don't remember is developing ringworm. My mom said I got it probably because I was always naked running around in the grass and I hated taking baths. Some things don't change. Maybe I stepped in dog poop or even sat in it and didn't know it, because I think ringworm is spread through feces or something.
I don't remember the treatment for ringworm but I remember being completely freaked out that there was actually a worm lodged under my skin. I kept squeezing the skin to try and get it to come out. I'm pretty sure it went away quite quickly though.

When I was six I got lice. Probably from some dirty kid. There's always that dirty kid in your class and I always ended up befriending that kid. What sucked about this was that I had long, tangly hair that fell to my butt almost (my mother liked to keep me looking like a fundamentalist mormon) and the toxic chemical treatment that mom force-combed through my locks until my scalp was bloody didn't work. It got so bad that I had to cut off all my hair to a shoulder-length bob. Lice was maybe the best thing, fashion-wise, that ever happened to me in childhood.

When I was about ten I was doing my homework and playing with my hair when I found a tick behind my ear. That was fucked up. I remember scratching it and thinking, gross. How did I get a fuzzy pimple back there? And why can't I pick it off?
I ran downstairs and my poor mother had to deal with my hysteria. She tried everything to get it off...I think she even lit a match and tried to burn it at one point, but in the end we drowned it in rubbing alcohol and intoxicated on fumes, the fucker fell off. Mom flushed him down the toilet and I remember being nervous for a while that it would make its way back up the bowels (excuse the pun) of the septic system and bite me on the vagina.

Let's fast-forward a bit now. Remarkably, I made it through my college years without any nasty bloodsucking parasites living in my pubic hair, but when I was 25 I got married. Then I was legally bound to a parasite. Ha! Seriously though.

I went on my honeymoon to Puerto Rico. I spent the days of that week reading Ann Rice novels and baking my skin to a golden bubbly eating delicious tropical fruit. No problem, right?

Wrong. About three months later I expelled, during a (somewhat lengthy, but) routine bathroom visit, a flat worm the length of my arm. You may ask, how did you know you shit out a worm? Do you look at the toilet after you have a movement? Yes.
And so do you.

I had to fish it out of the toilet with a pair of tongs (that went straight to the dumpster) and put it in a coffee can to bring in and show my doctor. Ever sat in the waiting room of your doctors office with a giant Chock Full O Nuts can between your legs? It's mildly humiliating.

In the end, I was prescribed some kind of poison that tasted like baby aspirin, which killed anything that might have taken up residence in my intestines. And I haven't seen the likes of those guys since.

Which brings me to my most current brush with parasitic nastiness. I started developing what I thought initially to be a rash on my hips, legs, and boobs. It itched like a bastard, and nothing seemed to help it...not calamine lotion, not tea tree oil, not epsom salt baths, not getting drunk and trying to forget about it. My whole life became about scratching. I was like a homeless dog with incurable mange. I was actually rubbing skin off from scratching.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. It gets so you can't even think about anything else.

I finally went to the doctor and was told that I had scabies. Yes. Scabies. What almost-36 year old woman gets SCABIES?!
That'd be me. I'm still not sure how I got these nasty little mites that lodge under your skin and just relentlessly bite the fuck out of you, but I'm now focused on getting rid of them. I had to coat myself and Lily last night in a toxic cream that 'must be washed off in the morning!', according to the novel of a warning label.

And so here I sit, sippin on coffee, still with the urge to scratch, but less so.

I'm hoping this is the last chapter in this here story.