The story of Nickventure and his own case of Dirofilariasis.
Years ago I resided for several months in Sri Lanka. A country with a tropical climate and many stray dogs. I remember well having been in contact with dogs while staying mostly beside the ocean coast in the south of the island. What I did not notice was the mosquito which must have bitten me and the transmission of Dirofilariasis larvae into my blood stream. It was only several month later when I stayed in Europe and when it was winter and freezing cold that quite suddenly a raised area appeared on the left side of my head between my left eye and my left ear. This raised area was soft and painless. I was surprised that within what just appeared to me to be not more than a day or two, such a change was able to occur on my head. But I was not even that much worried. I believed this soft tissue may be some fat which in the worst case could be removed by surgery with local anesthesia. I even thought that this was an interesting situation. When I showed my condition to a friend he appeared to be far more worried than I was. He asked me to go to a hospital asap. Which I declined. I decided to keep an eye on this unusual enlargement and kept a digital camera ready. I started to make photographs so that, just in case something special occurs, the changes could be reviewed.
I continued to work and have been at a work place when I noticed a red dot appearing on top of the raised area of the skin. I massaged the skin considering that maybe sooner or later there could be a breakthrough of body fluids towards the skin’s surface. Still there was no pain at all.
The next day I was at work again and I decided to use the good light and a mirror in the bathroom to have a look at the evolution of my condition. This time the red dot appeared to be looking like a weak point in the skin, ready to burst open. I slightly massaged the raised area on the side of my head and the skin ruptured exactly where the red dot had been. Yellowish body fluid emerged and embedded into it was moved outside towards the skin’s surface a living worm. Very actively moving and curling itself during several minutes. I had started to make a video immediately after the skin had ruptured to obtain the documentary footage of this quite rare event. With 2 hands this was the best I could do in this situation. Of course it would have been even better to film the eruption itself. But I needed a hand to hold the camera and I have not been sure that anything of such unusual nature would emerge from the wound. This several centimeters long and slim worm was indeed completely unexpected to me. I very much enjoyed the making of the video and took all the necessary time to do so. I moved the worm together with the body fluids onto a sheet of ordinary toilet paper and noticed that the worm lost power and that the spiraling movements became slower and that the worm was going to die. If I remember well, the worm appeared to be lifeless and dried out within less than 10 minutes. The area which had been purged of the worm and the accumulating body fluids was now flat and normal in volume again. The red dot was a small hole filed with coagulating blood and in the process of healing. No pain, no discomfort.
Once I had finished my video and picture taking I left the bathroom and showed the results to my friends at the work place. They were horrified which caused a good amusement for me and I enjoyed how much they were concerned and scared of the parasite. Because somehow I was not feeling threatened at all by this worm and I was rather very happy that the wound was purged, painless and for sure healing already. Of course I also started to do some research about the worm and how it may have entered my body. This led me to learn about Dirofilariasis and how the disease is transmitted. Considering that I had unusual video footage the idea to share it online came to my mind. I uploaded a video using several still images which I had done when it was not yet clear to me what will be the outcome. And I used the video with the moving worm exiting my head alive for another upload on YouTube. It seems that grown Dirofilariasis nematodes exiting the body in this way are a very rare occurrence. And having a video of this event is even more rare.