Night of the Living Crawlies

My friend told me her theory that every living adult has a worm or two in his or her guts.

I protested. I don't like the idea that while I'm sleeping, some slimy creatures of hideous monstrosity crawl inside my intestines roaming my guts, popping out its head out every now and then out of my nostrils or behinds. I don't like the idea that when I'm eating, I'm indirectly feeding that creature inside, and that it gets the best of the vitamins and minerals out of the food I eat, leaving my body the empty roughage for the bulk.

My friend insisted that it is true. She asked me , "Have you ever felt some tickling in your throat, one time or other? Or some indescribable tickle up your arse at night?"

I thought for a while before I said yes.

"That's your worm trying to come out," she assured me. "That's their tails you are feeling."

God, why do you have to create creatures such as worms and flukes to infest our guts? I can live with those poor earth worms crawling out of the earth after a night's rain, showing the world their pitiful pinkish segmented bodies wriggling away (by the way, earthworms are hermaphrodites). But worms crawling in human's guts, attaching their hooks and suckers in my intestines and dispensing their proglottids from time to time to accomodate their lengths inside me is a totally different matter altogether.

Why I started thinking about worm-infestation was because I suspected that I might just got my gastric flu from some raw fish salad I ate at the food stall near my work place. I hate myself for eating it. It was definitely fresh water fish, whose preparation and hygiene frankly escaped my mind. For all I know it could be the salmonella or some other rotovirus which got into me from those chunks of flesh. But it could also be some worm larvae now that my imagination has been fired up. The symptoms are the same: abdominal discomfort, diarrhoea, vomiting, and weight loss.

Check this out: That is one motherfxxxing tapeworm inside a carp, which is a very common freshwater fish eaten in Asia.

I read in an article in the Guardian years before about some girls who are desperate to lose weight swallowing 'diet pills' containing tapeworms. They would let the tapeworms suck every food items that they eat until they reach their desired weight, then they would swallow some anti-worm medicines to expel the worms. Ingenious. I don't know how true it is but I can't imagine myself doing that. Consciously swallowing tapeworms. It requires guts.

Of course my mother would ask me if I'd swallow one of those in the event that I was being forced to should I be in some kind of roman prisons. She loves these hypothetical questions where I would be subjected to various forms of tortures and I had to choose what to do. She told me the story from some olden movie she watched with my grandad, that of a roman prisoner being fed a burger filled with worms. Because the dungeon was dark the starving prisoner had no idea and would just chew on it. She told me that story while we were having dinner when I was about eight. But I thought, didn't the worms smell?

Anyway, back to the tapeworms. Here is an interesting story I found on this guy who suffered from some tapeworm infection. http://fray.com/drugs/worm/

I certainly hope that my friend is wrong, that those tickles are just some inexplicable bodily functions that humans have to experience every now and then.

Oh, and she said too, that sometimes when you feel those tickles on your soles, as if some small creatures are wriggling their way into your skin, well, it is of those worm larvae. In the tropics worm eggs are everywhere in the air and are just waiting for hosts to enter into. You step onto one of those and there they go burrowing themselves into your skin.