My first parasite, not for the faint hearted or wek stomached!

Well, it was bound to happen, I got a tropical parasite. My first, and hopefully my last!

About a week ago I noticed a small spot of my one of my toes. It looked like a raised mole and was tough like a calus. I didn’t think much of it, it didn’t hurt or itch or anything. But then this weekend I noticed it had gotten WAY bigger, and was a little tender, though only when I pressed on it. So today I made my way to the nurse’s office and showed it to her. The Diagnosis? It’s a jigger.

A jigger, properly known as Tunga penetrans (shown above, pic is from a website, not the actual one from my foot!) is a small insect living in the soil and sand in parts of South America and Africa. The female burrows into the feet of mamals for food and stays there while laying her eggs. Yuck!

So, the nurse sits me up on a bed covered in cracked vinyl and takes a cotton ball, disinfectant, and a needle (a new one, I watched as she opened it) and starts digging it out while scolding me for not having taken care of it sooner, because its “grown too big.” Eventually she has to take a small razor (also from an opened package, I was nervous and ready to flee if anything that looked remotely like it could have been used before came near me!) and poking, cutting, and squeezing gets the jigger out. And shows it to me. Yuck!

Then she gives me a bandaid, tells me to keep it clean, and that next time I can dig it out myself with a safety pin! (And to do so before it gets big.)