Lowly the Worm

Well, we have been living in Africa on and off for almost 8 years now. We are very thankful that we have never caught any strange diseases or anything other than normal viruses; there are a plethora to choose from too! This week, Heidi broke our trend! Ian has named him Lowly after the Richard Scary character... I don't think these are unheard of in the States, but with many more dogs and cats dewormed, and not as many chances to walk barefoot, it is less of a problem. Here these parasites are frequent during rainy season, which we are trying hard to have right now. They don't cause much harm actually, eventually if left to their own devices, they would die and be ousted from the body on their own as they can't reproduce there, but meanwhile, their wiggling is VERY itchy. The solution? We took a worm medicine and crushed it up,put it in vaseline, and applied it topically (that is what the orange blobs are). The red line is Lowly himself! If my sister in law is reading this, she will be saying, "That is so discusting!" but Heidi says you are a nurse, so you should be used to things like this. She was rather grossed out herself at first though too!