Guybrush

Are you crazy? Thanks for teaching me stuff about the remora fish .. I've always wondered about those little suckers!

There are ways (like with the pork tapeworm), something that travels in your blood can end up in the brain. Your neighbour sounds paranoid though, I don't think there's a need to worry about that.

Thanks to Bulldog for the bot-fly post and also thanks to [paranoid.android] and Vanilla for icky pictures!


The little worm in the eye looks a bit like a nematode worm which is what the next parasite also is. Wuchereria bancrofti is one of more parasites that has a life stage that can live in people's lymphatic system, the body's conduit network where lymph sloshes about. The other stage is in mosquitos, so mosquito bites is how you get them.





Wuchereria bancrofti looks perhaps relatively harmless and one probably wouldn't cause so much damage. However, when they become many, they clog up your lymphatic system which causes lymph to accumulate in those areas and your body starts swelling up (other factors such as immune responses might also add to the swelling). This swell condition (pun) is called elephantitis and the swelling usually takes place in the arms, legs or the scrotum.









As you can probably imagine, these swollen parts are full of little worms just enjoying life in the lymph. Having elephantitis might not kill you, but it can severly disable you or even make you really ugly.

I would not want to travel to a place where there's a chance of getting these little suckers!

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Something Completely Different

gunnels

My mom treats lymphema from time to time. She works as a massage therapist at a hospital. Hasn't had it that bad yet, though.

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Let's Play TF2 Sometime.|Unrepresentative Last.fm.|Puns, Pokemon, and Miscellany

Thrice

Ha ha! Good one

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Lew Harrison, who looked like an anarchist with his red eyes and fierce black beard, had been writing furiously in one corner of the room. "That's good—happiness by the kilowatt," he said. "Buy your happiness the way you buy light."

Freebase Dali

I never knew Elephantitis was, essentially, worms.


Learning has never been so gross.

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lucifer_sam

well it's also a function of the body's immune reaction to it. there is no specific worm which causes elephantiasis (there's about twenty that can), each elicits different reactions in the body.

it's also interesting to know that the disease that plagued Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man" for which elephantiasis was named) was NOT elephantiasis but actually a much rarer congenital defect called Protean syndrome (of which there have been possibly 200 cases worldwide).

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first.am

midnight rain

Proteus* syndrome

Has this become the new diseases thread?

Thrice

Oh yeah I have seen that, they call him the Tree Man no?

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Lew Harrison, who looked like an anarchist with his red eyes and fierce black beard, had been writing furiously in one corner of the room. "That's good—happiness by the kilowatt," he said. "Buy your happiness the way you buy light."

Freebase Dali

I believe so.
It's also what I call my herb supplier.

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CAPTAIN CAVEMAN

anyone have any ideas whats up with this guy??

Freebase Dali

Yea, I saw some kind of documentary about him. It's some abnormality that causes warts to grow uncontrollably. I forget the details, but after years and years of not doing anything about it, it got that bad.
Supposedly he's getting treatment and getting all that surgically removed.

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