I Have Parasites - from the acclaimed author of "I Have Fleas" and other short stories

When Philip and I set foot on Pohnpeian soil almost a year and a half ago, our veteran community mates started us off right by frequently discussing their need to get “de-wormed.” Phil and I would exchange confused looks, clear our throats, and ask tenderly, “Do you mean to say that there are worms in your bodies?” They would laugh and respond, “Probably not," our anxious minds soothed. We learned, however, that, to be safe, it truly is suggested that one living in the tropics get “de-wormed” every three to six months.

When I say worms, I'm not exaggerating - they look just like the worms that flop around in the sidewalk cracks after a rain. These worms in particular are classified as parasites – disease-causing organisms that live on or in an animal or human and derive their nourishment from their host. Lice, fleas, and many bacteria and viruses are examples of parasites that live ON humans; parasitic worms live IN humans. The eggs of these worms contaminate food (including the questionable meats I have consumed), water (including the tap water I sometimes drink), animals (including the pigs that used to live outside my bedroom window and the roosters that peck around my feet on campus), and frequently used, but less frequently cleaned, objects like toilet seats and door handles.

Well, those months flew, really. Before we knew it, we’d been here for over a year – fifteen months to be exact – and found ourselves as the veteran community mates. Having, so we thought, escaped the worms for the duration of our time here, we followed in the footsteps of our JV predecessors and made a pretty good joke out of the whole “de-worming” thing for our first-year community mates. When something went inexplicably awry in our bodies, Phil or I would nudge one another and remark casually, “…probably the worms!”

Well, it’s all fun and games until someone finds out they have worms, isn’t it? One fateful night, in conversation with some ex-pat friends, I learned of some side effects of these parasites, and made the connection between these side effects and the realities of my own body. I have been (thankfully) very healthy since my last bout of boils this summer, but had been feeling incredibly tired all the time, especially since the beginning of the new school year. I tried to regulate my lifestyle with sleep, diet, and exercise, and then resorted to extraordinary amounts of caffeine. Yet I still found myself, not just exhausted, but falling asleep - on my desk grading papers after school, once during class, and every day at lunch, when I curled up in a ball behind my desk and passed out. More recently, too, I had been having some inexplicable abdominal pain. The conversation was enough for me. I was off to get myself de-wormed.

I quickly acquired the six-pill, three-day treatment of a drug called Mebendazole, and was skeptical. The pills are some of the smallest I’d ever seen – about the size of a Claritin – and look very unimpressive. How, I wondered, can these tiny white specks expel worms from my body?

While I waited to see if the medicine would kick in, I found myself on WebMD (a dangerous, dangerous place) and other sites seeking more information about how I could find out whether or not I did have worms. Most reported that having a stool sample taken would be necessary to know for sure. I wasn’t sure if my healthcare would cover a “just out of curiosity” stool sample. I also found some things that I wish I hadn’t – for example, that these eggs lodge themselves in the intestine, hatch, grow up to twenty feet long, and multiply well into the hundreds. There are roundworms, hookworms, pinworms, whipworms, and tapeworms. It started sounding like a bad musical after a while, so nauseating that my skepticism grew and multiplied along with my hypothetical worms, and I decided that I didn’t have worms. Not me.

My skepticism of Mebendazole was unwarranted. I discovered, courtesy of WebMD (whose slogan should either be, "fostering fear and anxiety for just about anyone with Internet access" or "making the lives hypochondriacs even worse"), that Mebendazole, despite its size, is incredibly effective, keeping the worm from absorbing sugar, causing loss of energy and death of the worm. I also discovered that wiser, more sensible ex-pats really do get de-wormed every three to six months.

My skepticism of my hypothetical worms was unwarranted, too, and I’ll just say that I didn’t need a stool sample to help me figure it out. Mebendazole forgot to add a “Surgeon General’s Warning for the Weak-Stomached: Do NOT look in the toilet bowl while on this medication. You’ll thank us later.” It goes without saying that if I hadn’t joked about it for fifteen months and de-wormed myself in a timely manner, I wouldn’t have almost passed out when I did look in the toilet bowl.

As a teacher, I’m tempted to force myself to write on the blackboard 100 times: “Intestinal worms are a serious matter. Intestinal worms are a serious matter.”