A Fish Out of Water and Other Nasty Thingies...

Now that I am a mature 30-something, I must confess to our two dear readers that I am a somewhat squeamish person. I pretend not to be, and anyone who shows weakness in the face of blood and guts is branded either a 'great poof' or a 'big girl's blouse' by me.

I am a shocking hypocrite...

As a child, I would poke, prod, slice and dice at anything. Nothing turned my stomach. My desire was to grow up and become a vet. So each morning, I would inspect the garden lawn to see what 'presents' Tibby, our savage cat, had left. If I was lucky, there would be the odd shrew, which I would gather up, lay out on the paving flags, and dissect using my mother's sharpest kitchen knives (unbeknownst to her, I hasten to add!). Each minute organ, tendril of tendon, length of ligament and morsel of muscle (did you like that alliteration? I'm impressed!) was of great fascination to me and I cross-referenced the bits with my mother's antique Family Medical (which warned that lunatics should be kept in on a full moon) and resolved that, one day, I would find a cure for all sorts of animal ailments.

In High School, ever determined to become a vet, I later encountered the much-feared Biology teacher, and that was the end of my veterinary career. He was so terrifying that I dropped Biol as soon as possible, and went on to pursue a career elsewhere. The teacher went on to serve at Her Majesty's Pleasure when he was caught for messing about with his young, male pupils...

Nowadays, though, out of some perverse instinct, despite my late-onset squeamishness, I try to tune in to rather gory documentaries. I sit, transfixed, watching pus, blood, entrails and all sorts spewing their way out of people's appendages and I get a strange 'freeze' which travels up the right side of my face, sets my teeth on edge, makes my left eye do queer things, and my stomach flips over. At that point, I have to grab a cushion, hide my eyes behind it and make vomiting noises so I don't hear the squelching on the telly.

For the last two weeks, I have watched Invasion of the Bodyscratchers. Dr Mike Leahy (a nutter if ever there was one) intentionally infects himself with all manner of nasties for the purposes of scientific research, and the voyeuristic public (including me) watch him suffer such indignities as being infiltrated by a tapeworm cyst, a Bott Fly, and being eaten alive by malarial mosquitoes (he had taken his prophylaxes, dear reader(s)).


The tapeworm infiltration was incredible. He flew to Japan where he swallowed, whole, a tapeworm cyst. Upon his arrival in London, he then swallowed a pill camera so that the stages of the worm's development could be tracked. It was gross. At eight weeks, the worm had reached maturity, and the camera showed it squirming around inside his intestines, the lesions on the lining of the gut where it had latched on and eaten bits of him, and I felt quite poorly. At maturity, bits of the worm start to break off and are excreted in the stools ('shit' to you and me). These bits are motile and self-reproductive - he dug bits out of his poo, washed them off, and showed them squirming on his arm (urgh!). It was vitally important that he did not allow these bits to get into the public drainage system, as this could cause an infestation of epidemic proportions, so he had to poo into a seive and then dispose of the...erm...what's another word I can use now?...turds...safely.

It was at this stage that the worm's presence was making itself known and he wasn't feeling tickety boo any more. So, he got some hard-core laxatives from his doctor and drank the lot. (He'd heard of the bottom falling out of his world, but never the world falling out of his bottom...) His daft friend had also swallowed a tapeworm cyst but had decided to feed it a high carb diet to see if the worm thrived more on sugars. They expelled the worms into seives, rinsed off the detritus, and showed us what was left. It reminded me of ribbon noodles and quite put me off eating the prawn chow mein I had been saving. They laid out the worms, side by side against a measure, to compare whose was the biggest. Dr Mike's checked in at just under 2 metres. His mate's, which had been fed the high-carb diet, was shorter, but much thicker. Ergo, a high carb diet really does make you fat and stunts your growth!

Now, I could carry on and describe all the infestations he encountered, such as the Bott fly which had to be cut out of his leg last night, and looked to all intents and purposes like an enormous boil, until the 'pus' started wriggling around; or the Kissing Beetle, which kills more South Americans than AIDS due to the Chagas parasite it carries, which enters the body via the bite when the bug decides to poo in the wound, just for good measure. The parasite lies dormant in the body for a while until it gets bored and then irreversibly shuts down every organ in the body.

But, the one which really got to me was the candiru fish...

This vicious little blighter is found in the Amazon River, and is able to swim upstream. It has evil-looking barbs which it can splay out and latch onto soft flesh, meaning it is difficult to extract. Oh, and did I mention that it likes blood? So, if it can swim upstream, it likes to dig into soft flesh, and lives on blood, how can it get into a human? Take a deep breath...If you take a leak in the Amazon River, make sure you are holding protection in front of your genitals. Simple as that. I watched a surgeon, via fibre optic camera, entering the urethra of a very unfortunate fisherman, to extract this fish, using surgical tongs, from the chap's todger. It seems the pain of the fish up there was infinitely worse than the extraction procedure. If I was given to fainting, I would have fainted at this point.

So, next time you are bitten by mozzies, or get a wasp sting, don't start moaning, and wailing that you're itchy or sore. Spare a thought for that poor Amazonian fisherman who, when he went to spend a penny, got way more than he bargained for...