I hate worms, even the so-called good ones, like earthworms. I hate when it rains and they emerge from their tunnels, gasping for breath, covering the sidewalks. On wet days, I walk in the grass to avoid them, even though I know they’re in there, at least I can’t see them. My worst nightmare is being surrounded by worms.
One day, I wake up and find tiny, staple-sized worms in my bed, all over the sheets, wriggling and writhing. It’s horrible, I tell you. I can’t stop jumping around and screaming. Then the itching begins. An unbearable itch that’s unrelieved by scratching. When I dig at my bottom all I get is pieces of my skin under my nails. Well, right away, I’m off to see Doc Coffin.
He says, “Those are classic symptoms of pinworms, Enterobius vermicularis, is the medical name. But you can’t have them. Only children get them and the mothers of infected children. You’re a man and you don’t have any children. It’s in your head.”
And he takes a puff off his unfiltered cigarette, coughs and takes another puff.
I say, “Those things’ll kill you, Doc. Meantime, my ass is itching like I’ve got fire ants nesting in my butt crack. Can’t you give me something?”
He sighs and says, “Tom, you have vermiphobia, fear of worms. It’s all in your head.”
I say, “Doc, tell that to my butt. It’s killing me!”
He hands me a pill and says, “Take this.”
So I take the pill and the itching stops. Like magic, I’m cured.
The next day, I wake up and feel a little hot, feverish-like. I think it must be the flu, so I go back to sleep. The next time I wake up, I have a blister on my left leg. It’s a huge, hot, red, painful blister that gives me a burning sensation up and down the whole leg. It hurts like hell, but I’m not rushing back to see Doc Coffin, since he’s not what you call sympathetic, has no bedside manner, as it were. So, I go back to sleep and stay in bed for close to two days. When I wake up, the blister’s gone and so’s the pain.
“Hooray!” I do a happy dance and sing a cheerful tune. Then I look down where the blister was and see a little white thread dangling outta my leg. I look closer and see it’s a freaking worm.
“Doc, you gotta help me!” I’m back in front of him, screaming and jumping up and down. “I’ve got a worm hanging out of my leg! Get rid of it!”
He stares at me with his big, sunken eyes, and says, “This is all in your head.” He lights a cigarette, takes a puff and coughs.
“Doc, look, can’t you see this thing hanging outta my leg?” And, I tell him everything, the flu, the fever, the blister and the stringy white worm, dangling outta the hole where the blister was.
“Those are classic symptoms of Guinea worm disease, caused by Dracunculus medinensis and it occurs in poor communities in remote parts of Africa, like Sudan, where there’s no clean drinking water. Have you ever been to Sudan, Tom?”
“No, but look!” I point at my leg and the worm is waving its head around, wriggling and moving. “The goddamn thing is moving, can’t you see it? Do something!”
“Take this,” he says and hands me a skinny white stick.
“Wrap the head of the worm around this, and pull it out a few centimeters a day.”
“A stick? I have a freaking worm hanging outta my leg and you hand me a stick?”
He shrugs his bony shoulders and says, “That’s the treatment for Guinea worm. It’s either the stick or surgery.”
Surgery scares me more than worms, so I say, “I’ll take the stick.”
Every day, for a month, I take the stick and wrap the worm around the stick a little each day. And, finally, finally, finally, it’s gone. And I can sleep without worrying about it.
Until the day I wake up coughing and coughing and coughing, like it’s been me smoking the cigarettes. The chest pain is killing me and I’m hacking up rusty brown sputum. This time, I’m not waiting.
“Doc, it’s bad, real bad,” I says to him. “I’m coughing up blood and I feel like someone’s stabbing me in the chest. Look!” And I cough up a handful of blood, see tiny white pods writhing in my palm, and show him.
He ignores my open hand and says, “This is all in your head.” He lights a cigarette, takes a puff and hacks. “It’s time to move on.”
“I’m spewing blood and you tell me to ‘move on’? Who are you, Dr. Phil? I’m in pain. For all you know, I could have TB or cancer or lung flukes.”
He stares at me with those dark sunken eyes, shakes his bald white head and says, “Lung flukes? Pargonimus westermani? Have you been eating raw crab meat, Tom?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in Asia, Africa or South America?” He says, puffing and hacking.
“No, but don’t you think this is serious? This could kill me!” I say.
“Tom, it can’t kill you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already dead!”
As soon as he says that, I see that he’s the skeleton of my family doctor, who died of lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking cigarettes. We went to his funeral when I was in college. And, I look down at my rotting arms, legs, and belly and see millions of earthworms taking away pieces of me with each tunnel they make.
END
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