Liver Fluke Fasciola Hepatica and the lives it wrecks

Posted by inthedark @inthedark, Apr 27, 2023

I have come to learn that if you have a parasite infection that you unknowingly give people free rein to discriminate and dehumanize. It started in fall 2020, like I'd had my chest filet open. The most god awful pain ever, lump in throat that continued to swell to where I couldn't swallow solids, spine would swell, neck and into ears and jaw so swollen like it was wired shut, my ear canal eventually swelled shut and the taste of amphibian came to mind as I developed a unusually disgusting constant slime feeling in mouth. Then the lump in throat seemingly ruptured one day in March 2021 as if I was stabbed from inside out, knocked the wind out of me.then proceeded to salivate for several days so much so I had to walk around with a cup and it continued to get thicker and then gritty and I noticed I was spitting up these little white things that looked like sesame seeds and they were moving so went to local ER and they diagnosed me as delusional right out the gate. I went to the emergency room and urgent Care combined a total of 14 times in a two week period as I knew that something much more sinister was coming down the pipeline from my symptoms I was having far worse than the one I already had and I proceeded to choke up things that look like that's what I said I even told them that it looks like flukes nobody would listen to me nobody would do anything and in fact I treated myself with albendazole and praziquantel and all it did was slow it down. Oh did I forget to mention that it's subcutaneous as well yeah it's not just in my gastrointestinal tract and I'm sure you guys will learn to who I am if it kills me because it's imagining it's in my central nervous system because one came out of my eye on January 3rd and it's only a matter of time literally I can feel quicker in my brain sometimes and like my whole head almost stutters on my head thinking problems timing scheduling I can't do anymore I've lost my job because I can't work it's all I can do to get through the day every 12 weeks it goes through a peak. And what I mean by that is goes crazy under my skin and the ones under my skin and in my eye and for my bell I'll look completely different cuz they're all in different stages of morphology and I don't think I'm a doctor but education is education and I've been forced to educate myself on this and I've been doing nothing but trying to save my own ass since March 21 and it's my story and if I don't tell it nobody else will and this disease right here I should not have to be beating down doors to get a blood test that should I have been to me in a country where we were made to think that we don't have this issue here but let me tell you I've done my homework and it's a known thing and we'll see the vets are well aware of the liver flick issue and virtually no farm is free of liver fluke in California and it is waterborne that's a fact and it was also a fact is that the doctors are so poorly educated on parasite infections that they would rather dismiss you and send you home sick as hell even though I've had plenty of signs that point to supporting what I'm saying I have but they don't care it's seriously like I'm living in la la land I mean I don't know how to explain it it's like the Twilight zone it's almost like it's being done on purpose because all they're doing is setting me up to die I'm going to die and if the last thing I can do before I die or in my desk is get the law changed so that people don't have to go to the CDC to get this blood test or the medication then that's what needs to happen because I shouldn't have to be fighting with what little energy I have in my body to just get simple freaking help the CDC said it's diagnosed by either eggs in your stool or by seeing adult flukes well here's my adult flukes take a look

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vpear | @vpear | Jan 4 9:08am

In reply to @davidsean "One more thing. For immediate relief, I take these anti-worm “baths”, where I put all of..." + (show)

Thanks so much!

inthedark | @inthedark | Jan 8 3:31pm

I'm the one who posted the original and let me start by saying one thing, "editing"?? So let me update everyone and I'll try to make better sense .
Firstly I'm still sick, and although mentally I'm now accustomed to them moving under my skin, physically it's only a matter of time.
These don't move a lot distance wise but when they do it's very painful. I've long suspected that there is more than one parasite on board, which so everyone knows its far more common for a person to test positive for two infections than one because often they piggyback one another. I'm going to share a series of pictures that have my specimen next to an image of fasciola hepatica which collectively is why I believe that this is what I have. Now I'm going to throw a wrench in this line of information. There were points that stuff I expelled either by mouth or bowel looked like roundworm material. But I figured the praziquantel or albendazole would've knocked it out if it were. I was wrong. By the way I bought praziquantel OTC at Walgreens. Albendazole I bought from Mexico. After taking albendazole for multiple weeks in small doses I thought it was starting to work but it only seemed to slow them down/ paralyze them. So by process of elimination and genuine research I came to the conclusion of fasciola hepaticas because it's the only fluke that can't be killed with anything other than the trichlobendazole. Which is correct you can only get that from a prescription and actually it comes from the CDC and in order to get that you have to have the blood test for fasciola hepatica which also is processed through the CDC. Rarely does this fluke show up in a o&p test as it is dependent on the egg output and the egg output is dependent on so many variables but it's a very specific special host parasite relationship that is individual to each person so you could have eggs all the time or you could hardly ever have any at all. So blood is the preferred testing method which also has to come from the CDC. Side note: per UC Davis; virtually no farm in California is free from the liver fluke... Per California Water Service: allowable amounts of farm runoff have been found in your water supply , which for healthy people is ok but if immunocompromised could be bad ( I am with kidney disease). I also had a CT scan which reads exactly like one would for a patient with fasciola hepatica: multiple sub centimeter hypodense lesions on liver and in left/right hepatic lobe, had blood test with EOSINOPHILS and BASOPHILS my first visit which work together notoriously in HELMINTH infections, I've had nucleated red blood cells which any count over zero is cause for concern since this only occurs when your body is producing red blood cells outside of the bone marrow. So with just some of these facts /tests listed it is beyond me why I would need to try to convince any doctor that they should clearly see the picture and yet I had something come out of my eye in January and rather than listen to me she subsequently dropped me from her practice the following week....I kid you not. I had this infectious disease doctor Dr Nand in Stockton California and had her for 4 months and after all that time she still failed to obtain my medical records. She simply went off the notion "that all the ER docs were right when they diagnosed me as delusional"... One could see that the ER doc not only did he lack the degree in psychology, he straight overlooked my blood tests that clearly supported a parasite infection. I really can't believe all that's happening as I'm homeless and can't work because neurological issues that have yet to be addressed and I spit up larvae. I've been mocked in my records and blatantly made to look like I'm crazy. It's a matter of time before one gets into my heart or the wrong part of my brain. Oh I failed to mention that I also received positive test results from the parapsychology center in Arizona in June that shows I have two parasite infections so I get to even be tested for the festival of hepatica but thus far I have the two infections for sure but it's not sufficient for Stanford they're making me redo my testing through quest who has failed to come back with a positive result multiple times when clearly my samples should've been escalated to a morevin depth lab.

inthedark | @inthedark | Jan 9 11:49am

In reply to @davidsean "VPEAR - I want add that I’m NOT saying the the things in the last image..." + (show)

@davidsean

VPEAR - I want add that I’m NOT saying the the things in the last image you posted were not Fasciola hepatica or some other “fluke” or trematode or helminth parasite. They actually looked like fasciola hepatica to me. I just wanted to say I could not tell for sure. For instance, the first pictures that @inthedark posted looked to me VERY MUCH like the first flukes/parasites I vomited up for hours on end from my stomach and throat and lungs after I took my first anti-parasitic drug of any kind (Praziquantel), which seemed to get rid of chunk of large ones, but did not cure me of them. My experience has been very similar to what @inthedark has described, including have trouble getting medical professionals to treat you, often because they’re not familiar with this. It’s hard to get treated, and it’s hard to get a definitive diagnosis, to get labs to perform an antibody test (to see if you have antibodies against a specific parasite, or to see if a sample of the parasite reacts to an anti-parasite antibody), or to perform a ‘PCR’ test, to see if there is DNA from a specific parasite in a sample. To get good treatment, you need a definitive diagnosis. But an individual can’t get the CDC or Mayo Clinic Labs to give you a test (even offering to pay any sum necessary) without being referred by a state health agency. And some state health agencies (such Missouri, where I live) no longer perform parasite/worm identification. It’s a like a chicken/egg conundrum without an easy entry point. I’m working on cracking this riddle, to find an entry point to get a definitive diagnosis, and ultimately good treatment. Not just for myself, but so I can add information about how to do this to this discussion. ☺ Because with the right drugs, there is honestly a way out of this. If the parasite you I or any of the other members of this discussion are afflicted with is Fasciola hepatica, then ridiculously, two treatments of a drug called triclabendazole 12 hours apart can work wonders for a cost of like...$4 a dose. It’s ridiculous. And the drug isn’t dangerous or addictive or anything. It’s just hard to get your hands on in the US, because the condition is rare here. But have hope, because there is a cure out there.

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Hi so I've not replied to anybody specifically and mentally and pretty fogged and it's kind of hard for me to stand task and or even learn new things at this point so trying to even come on here and find out how to update my information without actually directly replying to a comment I can't figure it out and I used to be pretty sharp but anyways so I'd like to speak with you some more in regards to this actually it is very prominent here in the US you know I've paid for a couple of papers that in doing the research on this and you would be astonished that this liver fluke has long been here since way before our time and in fact where I live in California it's so prominent that it's not even tested for on the farms in the AG industry because it's a given that the herds will already have them and based off of what I have found that they are transmittable by water not just by vegetables I've got some pretty in-depth information but I was diagnosed actually as having a nematode larvae infection in June by the parasitology center in Arizona but they still haven't traded me astonishingly I can't stand here cuz I have stuff I got to do I'm getting ready to leave but I really want to talk to you I'd like to talk to you on the phone actually but I'll hit you back later

mjw6xc | @mjw6xc | Mar 22 8:37pm

In reply to @wkd "Those pictures do not appear to be a Fasciola Hepatica. I have stained some myself when..." + (show)

Can you say what it looks like? I’ve thought I’ve had liver flukes too, and maybe other parasites ant the same time, and have had the tomato skin type things in my BMs which I’ve read were almost a certain sign of flukes. Thank you for helping. I might give you a call too, if that’s alright. Thanks

viscerallyreal | @viscerallyreal | Apr 5 10:54pm

Hi 👋,
I know exactly what you’re going through. I’ve been going through the same thing since Covid started. I went to a bunch of doctors and like yourself, they said don’t worry about it, it’s just some seasonal allergies or something. I am so impressed with your ability to articulate the symptoms. Finally I know that it’s real. I have no idea how it started or where it came from but some weird things started happening to me. I woke up one day and I had little red bumps all over my body, they looked like insect bites and they were really itchy. The doctor gave me some topical cream and calamine lotion to stop the itching. Then the other symptoms started, the slime was the first, it was constant and like yourself I was walking around with a spit jar… the doctors told me to drink more water and that it was just mucus. It’s so weird, my ear gets itchy every few weeks and then I start to experience a sore throat, nose starts running and then I get hot and start spitting up slime. I’ve since started experiencing other symptoms like little black dots in the mucus/slime, and a bad taste that comes around every few weeks with the ear ache. I started noticing what looks like dead flat worms coming out from my nose when I have baths. I finally convinced my doctor to give me a sputum test. A couple of nights ago I was finally able to get a proper sample, ugh it was awful.

I’ve been doing some research and I think you’re totally correct, I think what we have is a parasite. I haven’t yet fully figured out what it is but I think the sesame seed looking thing you mentioned is Protozoa or Paragonimus.

I have narrowed it down to the following parasites:

1. Schistosomiasis
2. paragonimus heterotremus

Good news is they are both essentially the same species, parasites. I believe they both lead to fluke worms. I’ve attached photos of what came out of my nasopharynx. They are titled my sample 1 and my sample 2. I’ve also attached photos of my research and the potential treatments for this problem.

I will wait to hear from the doctor about the result. Please let me know if you figured out what this is and have received the correct treatment.

Please stay in contact with me, I think we can help each other.

viscerallyreal | @viscerallyreal | Apr 5 11:04pm

In reply to @mjw6xc "Can you say what it looks like? I’ve thought I’ve had liver flukes too, and maybe..." + (show)

Please look at the photos I attached. I’ve been experiencing similar symptoms to this person.

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