Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Not for the faint of heart
SxKitten’s post on grigs turned me on to What’s That Bug?, a website dedicated to the identification of creepy crawlies of all kinds. All evening, Jake and I have been oohing and aaahing over all the beautiful spiders, moths, wind scorpions, sow bugs, you name it. What a hoot.
Jake directed me to The Worst Bug Story Ever. Scroll down past the head lice and the termite-riddled tampon to THE WORST BUG STORY EVER!!! It’s a long letter. Stop right now if these things disturb you . . . Anyway, as I read the letter, I began getting the shivers — not from the bugs, but from the dawning realization that this woman was quite likely delusional.
Delusional parasitosis, to be precise. Consider:
“I also began to feel something crawling, a ticklish sensation all over my body. I couldn’t see anything on me though.”
“They usually begin by crawling up my calves, then proceed to my scalp, they go in my ears and sting me, and even in my nose. I have some bite marks that look kind of like mosquito bites, others look like pin pricks. They are vicious little creatures. I’ve been to the doctor four times, first my primary doctor, then one dermatologist twice, and another once. None of them believe it is scabies. The dermatologist took a stool specimen, some of my blood, and a biopsy of one of the bites. Then he, like the primary doctor, gave me permethrin 5% although he, like the primary dr. couldn’t find anything.”
“I have never been more depressed. This is worse than when I had walking pneumonia about 3 or 4 years ago, especially since you can’t see them.”
The website’s author thinks this might have been a bird mite infestation, but I have my doubts. The letter-writer thinks her cat and boyfriend are afflicted (her boyfriend is “starting to get the same symptoms”). She goes to remarkable lengths to rid herself of her bugs, coating herself with vaseline, flushing her ears with peroxide, cutting her hair, and pouring hot sauce on her legs. Significantly, when she stays in her boyfriend’s sister’s place for a few days, her symptoms disappear. Since when do mites (or chiggers, or lice) abandon you, when you move to a different apartment?
Quoting from another article,
Patients with DP [delusional parasitosis] can resist suggestions that their condition is psychiatric rather than physical and refuse referrals for psychiatric care. In fact, in 35% of patients, the belief of infestation is unshakable. In approximately 12% of patients, the delusion of infestation is shared by a significant other. This phenomenon is known as folie à deux (eg, craziness for 2) or folie partagé (ie, shared delusions). Variations in this are the conviction that a child, a spouse, or a pet is infested.
I don’t know . . . perhaps I’m wrong. In a follow-up letter, our afflicted correspondent notes,
we still don’t know for sure what the heck they were and which of the many things we tried finally did the trick in getting rid of the little beasts. And for the first few months afterward, I actually had nightmares that they were back! The good thing is that it did end, eventually.
Does delusional parasitosis just take care of itself after a while?
That eMedicine article (linked above) distinguishes DP from formication, the sense that ants are crawling on your skin. Some of my newer readers may not remember my favorite formication story, so here’s the link.
Good night already!
D.
Dude. The doctor didn’t believe I had larvae in my head, either… until he had to cut them out.