I think have a thing for foreign medical care. I must do, as I'm always so willing to test it out and my ERASMUS year wouldn't have been complete without at least one visit chez le medicin. I just didn't expect it to happen quite so early on, although thankfully in a much less spectacular manner than the 'Canadian-sour-cream incident'.
Mosquitoes are unfortunately very common here so I thought nothing of it when it appeared I had been bitten several times on the one toe, forming a rather amusing phallus shape mark. So I let it be (apart from the fact that it itched like hell and looked hilarious) until I noticed a couple of days later when painting my toe-nails that it had in fact *ahem* grown and was now snaking it's way down my toe and on to my foot.
After keeping an eye on it for another couple of days and realising there was now something in my foot that was clearly not going to stop growing despite the amount of bite-cream, plasters and antibacterial hand sanitiser I put on it (at least I tried!), I decided to turn to the all-knowing Google. A sure fire way to get your skin crawling and convince yourself that you're being eaten from the inside out.
The symptoms and physical description added up. It appeared I'd caught a 'hookworm' - a parasite usually present in dogs and caught by humans walking barefoot through either infected faeces or sandy ground (as I live five minutes from the beach I am increasingly hopeful that it's the latter). And it has teeth! And was slowly drinking my blood! And taking my vitamins and minerals that were already in short supply thanks to a standard poor-student diet of super-noodles and pasta.
After an uncomfortable night, plagued by nightmares of giant worms with teeth (I think the microscopic image above says it all) I headed to the university nurse after morning class to have my dear worm friend confirmed. Unfortunately she was unable to issue me a prescription as she was only a nurse specialising in 'preventative health care' (ie she hands out condoms and leaflets to students) so I skipped afternoon class to head to the local medecin sans rendez vous and pay 25€ to tell the doctor what was wrong with me: "Il y a quelqu’un qui vit dans mon orteil” literally, “there’s somebody living in my toe.”
Leaving the adjacent pharmacy with a bag full of pills and enough antiseptic wash and spray to make me concerned about the impression I'm giving about my personal hygiene and a receipt to make your eyes water, I was revealed to finally realise what was wrong with me. I had put my tiredness and irritability down to having a lot to take in in my first few weeks and the university's penchant for 7.30am starts but it appeared loosing a substantial amount of blood and nutrients didn't help either.
On the plus side, the incident has caused me to enrich my French vocab to include the word for worm (ver) and subsequently allowed me to name my resident parasite for the time being, 'Victor le Ver'. Fingers crossed the tablets work... sympathy postcards always welcome!
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