Eye itcher

Valerie was telling me of a very interesting patient last week with the worm like animal poking out of the corner of a nine year old girl named Madelin. Madelin’s main complaint was...itching....for a month.

 

After not being able to grab it (it would recede into her every time Valerie tried to get to it) Valerie referred her out.

 

The patient returned today and I was able to be there to see her and get the story of what happened.

 

The patient’s mother took her to Hospital Escuela, where they put her under and took her in for surgery. She came out from surgery with her head bandaged, and told to come back next week. That Saturday her aunt was by the house, and the little girl was complaining of more itching. So they took a peek behind the bandages only to find the same animal still there, this time poking a little further out than before. Quick acting with some tweezers...and boom.

Valerie gave the extremely cooperative patient a once over for good measure to make sure everything was normal, and we had quite the interesting conversation with the mother....had she any money she would have been raring to go back to the hospital with a few choice words for them and their supposed “surgery” and all the money she did not have that she spent to make it happen.

 

The critter (later found out it is called a Torsalo here in Honduras...aka botfly in English) brought back to us has decreased in size since being plucked and dying...as if something that big still at that size would not have been more than big enough! Apparently this little guy is commonly found on cattle...not quite as commonly in eyes, but there you go.

 

And there it went.