I wonder whether the "body bugs" story may be indicative of tropical infestations arriving in US because of warming climate.
Morgellons: Medical Mystery Revisited
Feb 13
There's nothing out of the ordinary when you first meet the Houchins family. But then, ordinary really is only skin deep.
Roy Houchins started noticing changes in his body about 3 years ago...
"You try to sleep at night, you can't sleep,” he said. “The inside of your ears, your eyes, there's biting and stinging as well. You look for things and you can't find anything."
He dropped 40 pounds in just two months. He stopped sleeping, his vision began to blur and even more bizarre, he says he felt bugs crawling under his skin.
"I actually had a piece of a bug that came out of my foot,” he said.
At first, Houchins and his wife thought it might be lice, until he rubbed some salts across his skin and, as he says, “this black thing probably about 2mm long came out unfurled onto my…and I just looked at it and said I've never seen anything like this before."
"I felt like a single parent with a very sick spouse who I couldn't help and he couldn't explain to me what was going on, what he was felling,” Houchins’ wife, Christine, said.
In a panic, and wondering if he was crazy, Houchins turned to the internet,a dn found the answer to his symptoms. It’s a syndrome some are calling Morgellons -- named after a similar skin disease from the 17th century.
Houchins is among more than 3,000 others from coast to coast claiming to have the same symptoms. He says there are 30 here in Minnesota.
We met Linda Vosylius on one of her "good" days. The former nurse has a tough time peeling herself off the couch. Her mind is fuzzy, and bandages hide deep lesions on her face...
"It's a life of terror,” she said. “And a life that at some point will be worth living again, or not."
Vosylious says she's had Morgellons for 20 years. She no longer works, and her husband bathes her. She has coughing spells, shooting pains in her muscles and joints, and there are these strange string-like fibers.
"In the back of my throat, I think this is one of their party spots,” she said. "I know they're there because I took a piece of gauze wound around a finger and did a scrape back there.”
Maybe even more bizarre than the symptoms of Morgellons is what doctors are saying.
Dr. Jennifer Biglow is a dermatologist in the Twin Cities. She says the lesions, bug-like sensations and the fibers are alarming, but not because of their physical traits, but because they are also part of delusions of parasitosis.
Dr. Biglow says dermatologists have known of the condition, delusions of parasitosis, or DOP for many years. Simply put, years of research prove these symptoms are delusions and are not really happening.
"If you relax a minute and you think about the sensation of something crawling underneath your skin you will feel it,” she said.
Most doctors and medical professionals agree with the DOP diagnosis, yet there is a small handful who say this is too strange to ignore.
Dr. Randy Wymore is a medical researcher with Oklahoma State University. He began collecting these fibers from people in four different states and started running tests. He says the fibers don't match up.
"Humans don't grow red and blue fibers,” he said. “I mean that's kind of what it all boils down to, but the fibers are still there."
Dan Rutz, a spokesman for the CDC in Atlanta says they have formed a task force to investigate the symptoms of Morgellons. At this point, experts say there's not enough evidence to present a public threat, or concern, or even verify these symptoms are real.
"We want to let people know we're going about this open mindedly and sincerely with a true intent to come to some reasonable conclusions on it,” Rutz said.
Dr. Biglow has concerns too, and says giving these symptoms a name, like Morgellons, may give some patients a false sense of reality.
"There is one category of patients that may miss adequate treatment because they're using the internet and website as a place of security,” she said. "These individuals are suffering -- they're suffering and they're uncomfortable and they're afraid and they're anxious and you need to take care of these patients with an open mind."
Houchins and Vosylious say that's all they ask -- that someone take them seriously. Both Roy and Linda say they've found doctors locally to treat some of their symptoms, but not for Morgellons. Instead, they're taking medication for insomnia, and other drugs and treatments for symptoms linked to lyme disease, and multiple sclerosis.
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Body Bugs
Feb 13
It is a story unlike many we have ever seen. It began with one South Florida woman and has now grown to involve dozens of people. People claiming to have bugs coming out of their bodies. Don't believe it? Then sit back and watch Patrick Fraser's special investigation, Body Bugs.
WSVN -- Meet Kathy Jimenez. Her life is a nightmare.
Kathy: "All my friends thought I was crazy. I lost all my friends."
Meet Susan Hammer. Her life has been destroyed.
Susan: "It's just drained me. It's quite humiliating."
Two women with one thing in common.
Jose Jimenez: "And she really has real bugs -- she has flies, ticks, nymphs. All sorts of strange bugs."
You heard him correctly. Clean, healthy people have bugs coming out of their body.
Susan: "This is horrible, and this is horrible."
Kathy lives in Miami-Dade. When her condition started 18 months ago, Jose bought a powerful microscope to determine exactly what was coming out of his wife's body.
Jose: "I just didn't believe that a person could have bugs -- live bugs just coming out of their body. It just didn't make any sense to me."
And, to be perfectly honest, at first I didn't believe it either. We asked Kathy to scrape her skin. Then we watched as Jose put it under the microscope to see what was there.
Patrick Fraser: "There's no doubt what that is."
It seems clear: a bug. And, if you are amazed, look at this. Every morning, when Kathy wakes up, the bed is covered with what appears to be pepper.
Jose put the pepper-looking substance under a microscope. It's amplified 100 times and is shocking.
Jose: "You can see it there, how it's moving. When it's all done, it just retracts right back into the cocoon, and again, it's just a piece of dirt if you didn't know any better."
At first, doctors told Kathy she was, to put it politely, off the deep end. This one wrote she needed psychiatric help.
Jose: "We are all crazy, and these pictures are figments of our imagination, and somehow we're able to photograph delusions."
Other doctors examined Kathy and watched as she contstantly scratched her itching body and told her they couldn't find anything wrong. Jose is convinced they are afraid to admit bugs are living in her body.
Jose: "Most doctors don't want to be labeled with that diagnosis because they get blackballed from the entire medical community."
Jose then sent slides to Harvard University and the CDC. Both had the same conclusion.
Jose: "One person said, yes, they're parasites, they're anthropods, but they don't think that they're coming from you. You're just being bitten."
But Kathy and Susan are not the only ones we found that have bugs in their bodies.
Trisha Springstead: "I probably have 50 people underground."
Trisha invented a cream that treats skin disorders like psoriasis. And people infected with this bug disorder came to her after doctors couldn't cure them. People like this beautiful young woman, who can't understand why bugs come out of her young arms. Or this woman, who has had the disease so long she says she has learned to live with it.
Trisha has talked to many of them and says many more are too ashamed to admit they have the problem.
Trisha: "They don't want to lose their jobs. They don't want to lose their reputations. They're horrified, and I'm going to advocate for them. I won't shut up. I won't."
Trisha says others who have microscopic bugs coming out of their skin are misdiagnosed. Sometimes they are told they have scabies or shingles, in part because many doctors don't recognize the problem.
Trisha: "I think they want do the right thing, but they are too used to looking in a textbook and saying, 'Well, if this is this, and this is this, it's delusions of parasitosis. Let's put them on anti-psychotics."
With no cure, Susan can't work and can't go out in public.
Instead, she sits at home and pulls these long things out of her body. She is left frightened, frustrated and furious.
Susan: "This needs to be cut. It's just horrible, when you've tried everything in the whole world and, you know, try to maintain your dignity and your integrity."
Susan has suffered for nine months. Kathy has struggled for 18 months and has just given up.
Kathy: "I just want to die."
Lillian Rivera: "The Health Department is taking this very seriously."
But now, the people who have this unique problem are getting some attention.
After we told the Miami-Dade Health Department about Kathy's condition, they sent a team into the Jimenez house to start investigating, to try and determine what is happening to these people.
Lillian Rivera: "Right now, to us it's a mystery. We do not know if it's an emerging infectious disease or a parasitic disease, at this time. We don't have enough information. We haven't confirmed a diagnosis, so we are investigating, and, until we have the final investigation, we cannot say."
At least someone is listening to Kathy, instead of telling her she is crazy.
Jose: "What would I like? I'd like to see all of these things gone from her body. I think that you're going to be seeing more of these cases."
Trisha is certain of that and is convinced these bugs that are infecting human bodies are a warning sign of things to come.
Trisha: "If we don't do something soon, this is the next epidemic. This is the next plague."
A frightening thought, but, clearly, this appears to be a frightening reality.
Patrick Fraser: "What did you think when you saw the legs moving?"
Jose: "You're horrified because you keep thinking, how does something like this come out of a person's body?"
How, why, and what can be done?
"I want somebody to help me. I want somebody to give me the right medicine to help me."
Hopefully, Kathy, somebody will.
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