INFESTATION.
One thing you can find on our ocean, and it’s for sure, are parasites.
They come in any sizes and shapes, and suck the life from hundreds of different species. Some of them attach themselves to the outer part of it’s host, and feed on it like a leech, but many times bigger –and hungrier- than a regular one. Others are more discrete, but not less dreadful, and attack from inside, draining the life of it’s host slowing.
Those are by far, the most interesting ones. The methods of infestation are many: Some lay eggs on the flesh of the host, and drain him not only to assure its own well-being, but also the fate of the host, controlling it’s behavior to assure his death in the mouth of a unlucky predator, soon to become a new host.
There are those who use the excretion system of its host to propagate eggs, so small that can infect through the respiratory system of any possible host who cross this dangerous path. Its like a invisible mine field, who infest any creature who cross it.
The most impressive are those who actually hunt for hosts. They have great mobility, and believe, intelligence, to search for it’s next host, and for a way to get inside his body. Those violators are vicious, and usually attack where it hurt the most, so any attempt to extract it cause too much pain to endure.
What people fail to see, it’s that for those creatures, fish or men are equally seen as potential hosts.
One case is very interesting, for account not only a human case, but for account also a unknown parasite.
The patient was a man, age 30, from north Europe, and worked as a lawyer. For his 5th year of marriage, he and his wife decided to travel in a luxurious cruise along the cost of north Africa.
The man was healthy, and one of his favorite activities was diving with other passengers, exploring the natural beauties along the route. His wife wasn’t fond of swimming in the open and instead used one of the many pools aboard.
One day the husband walked in the ship’s medical bay, where I worked. More than half of the people who walk in is sea-sick, have over-eated, sun burns, the usual things. About 40% are those who fail to have a good sense of what is fun or what is plain stupid, and visit with broken bones and some nasty cuts, but nothing actually dangerous. About 9% are the serious cases, like exposed fractures, seizures, heart attacks, which fortunately are rare. But that man case, to my surprise would be one of the 1%, the extremely serious case.
When the husband entered, literally pushed by his wife, I first think it was a case of over eating, or that he was just sea sick. The man was pale, and his facial traits showed more discomfort than pain. I smiled and asked what he ate last night, but before he could answer his wife start talking, concerned and angry.
“he is eating ANYTHING he can find! At the restaurant he act like a hungry pig, and doctor…he was eating the food remaining directly from the garbage!”
That was more than unusual. As a medic I have some knowledge of mental illness, and it was probably the case.
Then the wife continued:
“all he do is eat, he spent the last twelve hours hunting for anything to eat, didn’t sleep, and his mouth have this atrocious smell!”
And indeed, it smelled like something very rotten. I asked to him why he was acting like that but he just answered “ I am hungry”.
I asked him to open his mouth, and the smell hit me. It was horrible. It was rotten egg’s and feces, all togheter. That case looked more serious than I tought, I said to myself, then fighting against my nausea I looked in his mouth.
My first reaction was incredulity. I could swear I saw something black, similar to a leech, but from the size of a thumb, slide down his throat to escape my light. Then I went deeper and using a clamp I caught something, I was sure of it. For my surprise I couldn’t pull it out more than a inch, enough to see something horrible.
It was very slippery, and had a mouth similar to teethed suction cup. For my surprise th patient showed no gag reflex during my struggle with that little monster. It slipped and I could find it again. Scared, I asked a dozen questions to the husband, but he was like a zombie. Then I asked the same questions to the wife, but nothing was out of the ordinary. I decided it was too serious, and could represent a potential danger to the rest of the passengers , so I put him on quarantine and contacted the local authorities
The man kept asking for food, but he didn’t moved much more. I decided to do a full physical on him, to look for marks or other abnormal signals. The first thing I noticed was that his lower abdomen was clearly becoming larger and harder. I keep examining it with my hand, when something scared me more than I was willing to admit.
It clearly moved when I touched it, and the patient felt it too, because he moaned like if he was in great pain. The second thing I noticed was that he was getting more and more pale at each hour, and strange nods keep popping on his body, from toe to the top of the head. I rushed to the nurse and ordered her to bring blood to make a transfusion, and prayed for the arrival of the rescue helicopter. When I started the transfusion something very bizarre took place under the man’s skin. The nods turn smaller in matter of seconds, and appeared to move inside him.
The man expression changed too. He was almost a non-responsive zombie, but now he giggled and moaned with strange satisfaction. It was when he said he had to go to the bathroom.
I told him he couldn’t move during the transfusion, and with unusual resistance, the man agreed in using the “pan”. What happened next was truly horrible. The man didn’t made much effort, but something literally burst from his body, a huge black mass, covered in blood and feces. The wife runned away from the sick bay, and I almost followed her, but that strange mass felt between me and the door.
It was alive and moving, probably thousands of tiny leeches moving frenetically in all directions, but to my luck, they couldn’t go much further. The mass was of the size of a fist and was the source of the atrocious smell, I was sure of it. Then I heard the sound of something soft hitting the bed, and I was horrified. A huge mass of leech-like creatures, even smaller than the ones in the “ball” start moving out of the man’s body. Was like all his abdominal organs were turned in those hideous monsters, and I realized the patient was now dead. But the horrible spectacle didn’t end. Something start crawling from the man’s throat. Was the monster I saw at the beginning, big and round large like a thumb and at least twelve inches long. The creature crawled for a couple minutes, and then died.
When rescue arrived, all the little devilish creatures were dead. Apparently they couldn’t live long outside the water, or without a host. But, once again, the horror wasn’t over. At least a dozen other passengers were infected, we didn’t discover how. Those patients were treated with strong combinations of antihelmintics and we mananged to purge most of the parasites from the hosts without other fatalities. But the outcome was still scary. Huge amounts of dead parasites were found on each patient feces, for weeks after the treatment. Some of those parasites were microscopic, and were found also in the blood strain of each patient. At the end, the passengers were never “healed” but with constant medication managed to avoid the propagation of the disease.
We never found the initial source of the infestation, even with the help of the authorities. The ways it spreads was also a mystery. It obviously use the host excrement as propagation, but we found microscopic parasites on patients saliva, blood and even sweat. The ship was seized and , and are still quarantined somewhere near the north coast of Africa.
The infected were hold for years and even today are constantly under supervision.
How the first patient was infested? And where? For how long he carried it? The cruise crossed around the coast of dozens of countries, and the patient zero swim on all those waters, did he propagate the disease on those locations? I don’t know. Nobody does.
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