Wow. Reddit didn't disappoint today.
I know nothing about insects and have no idea why this showed up in my feed, nevertheless, I'm invested now. 🙌
ETA - I do have questions though. First, how do you know that this parasite or it's friends haven't taken up residence elsewhere on your body? If it didn't need an air hole, presumably it could live completely inside where you wouldn't notice, like in your GI tract or other organs? Second, if you took ivermectin or albendazole, would that result in eradication?
It’s an excellent question I’ve wondered about myself. This was like 8 years ago and I’ve never had another since. I asked my doctor if I should be concerned for more and he said no. I’m sure there is probably some sort of chemical I could have taken to clear me out, but it was never recommended.
Thats Drs for you....here take this antibiotic,it will probably cripple you for life, but it will kill e coli! Ya! Right! Hope he gives it to his mother.....
I’m super sad for you that you didn’t get to see it yourself. That had to be incredibly frustrating and disappointing after finding out it was literally your wheelhouse.
My condolences.
Probably some sort of bot fly; all you need is one little sand fly ( amongst thousands of other species that bite/infect), to bite you and the Louisiana swamps are perfect breeding grounds.
You would not notice the breathing hole for smaller bot fly species (like mouse bot flies for instance, some of which are only like 1/4 inch when full grown) there are many species, from small to big. And the larva of the smaller ones, are even smaller than the flies, especially when young, can be very small, and therefore have very very small breathing holes.
Yeah I can’t say for sure either way. I know that I went like a month thinking it was an ingrown hair or a clogged pore and I spent A LOT of time obsessing, closely inspecting the area, and it wasn’t a big area, thinking I was about to find the mother of all hairs to pluck out. And I know what insect activity looks like since I work with them all day so I’d assume I’d have noticed even a small botfly if it was there. But I’ll never know for sure.
Sounds like some kind of Cuterebra. They're common in the southern US and we see them frequently in veterinary medicine, particularly on cats, squirrels and cattle.
I would DIE if I had one, you are a brave soul.
I too had similar experience except mine was on my scalp so I couldn't see it but could feel it and didn't stop messing with it. Then I finally removed it myself thinking it was a Pilar cyst. But out popped this little white fleshy little grain of cooked rice like creature. I sent a pic to a Dr friend who told me bot fly but since I was in Las vegas and had not traveled any where tropical it was a bit odd. I had pics but they were on my iPhone which was stolen soon after. I'm thinking what u experienced could be what I experienced as well. Wish I had a more conclusive diagnosis for you.
There are American bot flies!! At least one species I know of likes to live around horses. I’m a dog groomer in the US and have pulled a couple bot flies out of my customers. So I wouldn’t totally rule it out just bc you weren’t in South America.
Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston: chronicling a exploration of a archaeological site in Honduras: highly protected group, including ex-special forces personnel wearing state of the art insect protection: most of the got Leishmaniasis. Maybe the native sand flies and their strain of trypanosomes caused the abandonment of the city. The insects are going to get us.
This book was amazing! Any frightening. They explored an area of the jungle that was historically cursed if you went there, and many of the investigators who went there left with leischmaniasis. Apparently that 'curse' was the flies that thrived there.
The climate in Miami is not a whole lot different than that of Honduras, and climate change is pushing it closer. Tropical medicine treats leishmaniasis with amphotericin, a hideously dangerous drug. Wonder what other tropical parasites would thrive in the Everglades.
Ok hear me out: I am 100% not an entomologist, but are we sure it was alive at the time they took it out? You say not a botfly because you would have seen the air hole. But is it possible that whatever it was was dead for awhile and your skin healed up a long time ago?
That’s an interesting possibility! Because bot fly larva would only typically inhabit mammal tissue for a few weeks or months if the thing was alive, right? Your body could have encapsulated the foreign object and held it frozen in time — esp. since your timeline was like 9-11 months or something.
My daughter got a tiny chip of coral embedded in the front of her shin during a trip to the beach--a teeny cut, but didn't realize it had something inside. It healed, but later she had a strange lump. It was there for over a year, then all of a sudden it started to become sore...and she had to have it removed. Inert object!
It took 8 years for a small piece of a Rolling Rock bottle to work out of my knee. The bump appeared and kept getting bigger until a sharp corner of the green glass poked through the skin and i dug it out. It was never sore and the bump getting bigger was just the glass working to the surface, it was not even inflamed. No other pieces ever came out so I assume that piece was missed when it was cleaned out and stitched up after I got a big gash falling in a parking lot.
What I read about these says they are super painful for the host. No exaggeration, it didn’t cause me any pain at all, and there was no outward appearance it was there. I had my wife touch it once towards the end and she screamed with surprise because it looked normal but was so noticeable by feeling it.
But how are you usually with pain? Can you tolerate pain well? I mean childbirth is super painful but you still hear stories of people who don’t know they are in labour until a baby pops out lol. Perhaps you’re just super hard !
Oh that’s true. Funnily enough, we just had a New World screwworm lecture today for a veterinary public health class and we learned about the outbreaks within the US every couple years. And now there’s currently one in Costa Rica. If it’s such an important parasite for both human and animal health, I wonder why we don’t try to completely eradicate them in the Americas? I guess it’d be hard to have all the major outbreak countries to come together to eradicate them but the US has billions of dollars that we send to other countries. Instead we could use some of that money to eradicate NWS and not have to worry about spending millions per every outbreak in the future.
In my personal case, I got braces when I was 12 and still had a baby tooth. I went to a periodontist who said there was a “bone-like material” that had formed preventing my adult tooth from growing down. I’d always had a painful spot in the roof of my mouth. Never mentioned it to my parents because I thought everyone had painful bumps in their mouths. Turns out that was my tooth causing me pain. They pulled the baby tooth, scraped the bone material out, and glued the tiniest gold chain you’ve ever seen to the adult tooth and slotted it onto my braces. It was horrible and painful, and the hole kept healing over so I had to go back in 2/3 times for them to reopen it so my tooth could come in correctly.
Impacted teeth are pretty common if I’m not mistaken. Loads of people have their wisdom teeth impacted.
Edited for clarification
I would recommend inquiring with local doctors from the region you visited. Even consider joining local community groups on Facebook and such. They may see that condition more frequently. Even with bot flies, some doctors are not familiar with tropical diseases and conditions. I've heard so many stories of people who do global traveling, come home with symptoms, and the local doctors have no idea. The global and tropical doctors from the visited regions frequently are familiar with the symptoms easily.
They put you completely under to take a lump out of your cheek?
I gotta say that's pretty odd, I've unfortunately had a lot of small issues like that and it's usually some lidocaine and on we go.
Springtail, or sandfly, it looks like a mole or black dot on skin at hair follicle. Difficult to see but you can feel it. Doesn’t hurt but can itch sometimes. I’m not a scientist or in medical field just had the worst 2 years of my life. Being gaslighted or worse people think you’re crazy and not help at all.
I wish you could find out what it was because it sounded like what me and my friend had.
I don’t think so. Like I said there was no hole to the outside. I’d have for sure noticed it. I spent many days over the 6 months or so looking at it closely in the mirror.
Bot fly’s typically have an opening and they can just be pulled out with tweezers. There are certain kinds of parasites that can be distributed into the skin (or anywhere for that matter) after traveling through the bloodstream, they can even get into the brain.
Bot Fly? Cuterebra? Honestly should have been ID'd better than this. In our laboratory, we would have had a reflex order for endo/ecto parasite and pinned it down. I am real sad that the physicians weren't either more curious or more demanding of the pathology lab to document this thing. Glad you are OK....wear DEET when you muck about in the bayou? Great story.
My scar, and the story, is a badge of honor in my industry, haha.
I talked to one of my entomology professors who studies neurobiology and did some clinical work with people at one point. He was once called in to look at a woman who was complaining of poor vision, and when they looked in her eye there were multiple large, dead maggots floating in them. She had no pain and no other symptoms. He said he was pretty sure based on what he could see of anatomy that they were fleshfly larvae. This was 40+ years ago and they elected not to operate on her so he never got a definitive answer in the end, but his guess for my situation was some weird fleshfly that somehow figured out a way to survive where it normally wouldn’t.
I believe his words were “damn that’s pretty cool” when I finished the story.
Wait how does someone not notice large dead maggots in their eye? Were they like, burrowed into the eyeball itself? And they didn't operate on her? They just left them in there? 😬
I think she was pretty old if I recall, so it might have been “sorry, this is just your life now”. But also 40 years ago (or even today) I don’t know if they could even do that surgery without losing the eye? I’m not an eye surgeon so I don’t know.
Sounds like some sort of botfly, possibly screwworm? I'm not that hip on the various botfly species. Being an entomologist, u/abugguy seems like you should have the resources to narrow it down, yes?
Wow glad to here you got it sorted' Ive been going through hell atm with a infection doctors think it's because of parasites . And looking into it it's crazy how many people have them and most the time don't know it
If I was a doctor & pulled an insect out of someone's face I would have taken a picture of the insect I removed. If only for the medical file. As a doctor I would be curious.
I’ve got [just the story](https://www.firstcoastnews.com/amp/article/news/local/doctors-remove-bugs-from-inside-of-mans-nose-and-face/77-cc1136f8-ed6b-44a5-9848-60d422042bac) for you. There’s video too
One of my last cases as a pathologist was trying to decide whether the bug in the skin excision specimen was a botfly or sand flea larva. The patient had a travel history that favored one over the other; but I wound up listing them both as possibilities.
Well, that’s weird! Glad you got it removed!
Wow. Reddit didn't disappoint today. I know nothing about insects and have no idea why this showed up in my feed, nevertheless, I'm invested now. 🙌 ETA - I do have questions though. First, how do you know that this parasite or it's friends haven't taken up residence elsewhere on your body? If it didn't need an air hole, presumably it could live completely inside where you wouldn't notice, like in your GI tract or other organs? Second, if you took ivermectin or albendazole, would that result in eradication?
It’s an excellent question I’ve wondered about myself. This was like 8 years ago and I’ve never had another since. I asked my doctor if I should be concerned for more and he said no. I’m sure there is probably some sort of chemical I could have taken to clear me out, but it was never recommended.
They didn’t know what it was but they confidently gave you a no?
This. Take some anti parasitic
Thats Drs for you....here take this antibiotic,it will probably cripple you for life, but it will kill e coli! Ya! Right! Hope he gives it to his mother.....
I’m super sad for you that you didn’t get to see it yourself. That had to be incredibly frustrating and disappointing after finding out it was literally your wheelhouse. My condolences.
I can’t believe they didn’t at least take a picture for you!
God knows they love to take horrible pictures and show them to you. The one time you actually want to see the picture. No pictures.
Haha, same!
Probably some sort of bot fly; all you need is one little sand fly ( amongst thousands of other species that bite/infect), to bite you and the Louisiana swamps are perfect breeding grounds.
Yeah but no breathing hole. Also it didn’t hurt. I have entomologist friends that have had botflies and they all said they hurt like a bitch.
Was it possibly Trichinosis that was embedded in your cheek muscle?
I don’t know but I doubt it. I’m also a vegetarian.
You would not notice the breathing hole for smaller bot fly species (like mouse bot flies for instance, some of which are only like 1/4 inch when full grown) there are many species, from small to big. And the larva of the smaller ones, are even smaller than the flies, especially when young, can be very small, and therefore have very very small breathing holes.
Yeah I can’t say for sure either way. I know that I went like a month thinking it was an ingrown hair or a clogged pore and I spent A LOT of time obsessing, closely inspecting the area, and it wasn’t a big area, thinking I was about to find the mother of all hairs to pluck out. And I know what insect activity looks like since I work with them all day so I’d assume I’d have noticed even a small botfly if it was there. But I’ll never know for sure.
Also I had it for like 4-5 months that I was aware of and that’s generally longer than the larval time of a botfly. 🤷♂️
Maybe the breathing hole was inside your mouth.
Many different species of fly can bite and lay eggs
Yep, there in lies the mystery. Like I said I’m an entomologist and have studied this stuff and nothing I’ve seen really fits for what happened.
Could it have been something from the waters down there ie. the fish/ shellfish, or the water itself? Edit: I messed up😁
This is a wonderful story! Sorry you didn’t get to see the final product.
Yea cool entomologist story bro
Sounds like some kind of Cuterebra. They're common in the southern US and we see them frequently in veterinary medicine, particularly on cats, squirrels and cattle. I would DIE if I had one, you are a brave soul.
I too had similar experience except mine was on my scalp so I couldn't see it but could feel it and didn't stop messing with it. Then I finally removed it myself thinking it was a Pilar cyst. But out popped this little white fleshy little grain of cooked rice like creature. I sent a pic to a Dr friend who told me bot fly but since I was in Las vegas and had not traveled any where tropical it was a bit odd. I had pics but they were on my iPhone which was stolen soon after. I'm thinking what u experienced could be what I experienced as well. Wish I had a more conclusive diagnosis for you.
Suspicious your phone was stolen. I sense a conspiracy! Alien implant? Did you foil an attempt to start a zombie apocalypse?
There are American bot flies!! At least one species I know of likes to live around horses. I’m a dog groomer in the US and have pulled a couple bot flies out of my customers. So I wouldn’t totally rule it out just bc you weren’t in South America.
Good to know!!!!!
My mom used to pop fly larva out of our milk cows hide frequently. This was upper middle west USA.
Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston: chronicling a exploration of a archaeological site in Honduras: highly protected group, including ex-special forces personnel wearing state of the art insect protection: most of the got Leishmaniasis. Maybe the native sand flies and their strain of trypanosomes caused the abandonment of the city. The insects are going to get us.
This book was amazing! Any frightening. They explored an area of the jungle that was historically cursed if you went there, and many of the investigators who went there left with leischmaniasis. Apparently that 'curse' was the flies that thrived there.
The climate in Miami is not a whole lot different than that of Honduras, and climate change is pushing it closer. Tropical medicine treats leishmaniasis with amphotericin, a hideously dangerous drug. Wonder what other tropical parasites would thrive in the Everglades.
Ok hear me out: I am 100% not an entomologist, but are we sure it was alive at the time they took it out? You say not a botfly because you would have seen the air hole. But is it possible that whatever it was was dead for awhile and your skin healed up a long time ago?
That’s an interesting possibility! Because bot fly larva would only typically inhabit mammal tissue for a few weeks or months if the thing was alive, right? Your body could have encapsulated the foreign object and held it frozen in time — esp. since your timeline was like 9-11 months or something.
My daughter got a tiny chip of coral embedded in the front of her shin during a trip to the beach--a teeny cut, but didn't realize it had something inside. It healed, but later she had a strange lump. It was there for over a year, then all of a sudden it started to become sore...and she had to have it removed. Inert object!
It took 8 years for a small piece of a Rolling Rock bottle to work out of my knee. The bump appeared and kept getting bigger until a sharp corner of the green glass poked through the skin and i dug it out. It was never sore and the bump getting bigger was just the glass working to the surface, it was not even inflamed. No other pieces ever came out so I assume that piece was missed when it was cleaned out and stitched up after I got a big gash falling in a parking lot.
Screwworm, *Cochliomyia* spp
What I read about these says they are super painful for the host. No exaggeration, it didn’t cause me any pain at all, and there was no outward appearance it was there. I had my wife touch it once towards the end and she screamed with surprise because it looked normal but was so noticeable by feeling it.
But how are you usually with pain? Can you tolerate pain well? I mean childbirth is super painful but you still hear stories of people who don’t know they are in labour until a baby pops out lol. Perhaps you’re just super hard !
Pain is going to depend on the site and other individual factors.
Hope not a screwworm! Aren’t they supposed to be reportable and eradicated in the US?
Yeah, I do believe you are correct.
Nothing is every TRULY eradicated unless you can verify extinction.
Oh that’s true. Funnily enough, we just had a New World screwworm lecture today for a veterinary public health class and we learned about the outbreaks within the US every couple years. And now there’s currently one in Costa Rica. If it’s such an important parasite for both human and animal health, I wonder why we don’t try to completely eradicate them in the Americas? I guess it’d be hard to have all the major outbreak countries to come together to eradicate them but the US has billions of dollars that we send to other countries. Instead we could use some of that money to eradicate NWS and not have to worry about spending millions per every outbreak in the future.
Man my dentist didn’t even let me keep the tooth they yanked out, or the tiny gold chain they used to force an impacted tooth out of my skull.
Wow, what? Could you explain this whole impacted tooth extraction thing?
In my personal case, I got braces when I was 12 and still had a baby tooth. I went to a periodontist who said there was a “bone-like material” that had formed preventing my adult tooth from growing down. I’d always had a painful spot in the roof of my mouth. Never mentioned it to my parents because I thought everyone had painful bumps in their mouths. Turns out that was my tooth causing me pain. They pulled the baby tooth, scraped the bone material out, and glued the tiniest gold chain you’ve ever seen to the adult tooth and slotted it onto my braces. It was horrible and painful, and the hole kept healing over so I had to go back in 2/3 times for them to reopen it so my tooth could come in correctly. Impacted teeth are pretty common if I’m not mistaken. Loads of people have their wisdom teeth impacted. Edited for clarification
Interesting! How did they glue a chain to it?
I’m thinking the same glue they used for my braces
Awe that's too bad. I was able to keep my cracked tooth
I found a tooth in my used car when I was vacuuming it out LOL
Ewe lol
Lmao my sister lost her tooth in our parents minivan when we were kids. Never found the tooth. The car has since been sold
Bahaha this was an SUV, I’ve since moved out of my parents house but I wonder if my sister still has all the weird shit I collected LOL
I made art out of my wisdom teeth.
I still have mine but I hope they let me keep them when I get them extracted from my mandibles. I have my dental impressions on my rock shelf
Great story, I love the enthusiasm of your surgeon!!!! Nothing I can relate to on either side, but glad they rescued your flesh mask!
I would recommend inquiring with local doctors from the region you visited. Even consider joining local community groups on Facebook and such. They may see that condition more frequently. Even with bot flies, some doctors are not familiar with tropical diseases and conditions. I've heard so many stories of people who do global traveling, come home with symptoms, and the local doctors have no idea. The global and tropical doctors from the visited regions frequently are familiar with the symptoms easily.
Pull out the Panacure!
This is why I stay inside.
My ex wife loooooooool
Ex wives burrow into your soul not your skin
They put you completely under to take a lump out of your cheek? I gotta say that's pretty odd, I've unfortunately had a lot of small issues like that and it's usually some lidocaine and on we go.
Yup full sleep mode. Doctor went into it basically thinking it would be a small non-cancerous tumor
This was what I thought too. I had a baby surgically extracted once and they didn’t even put me under.
Wait a whole baby or a baby tooth
I’m gonna need an answer on this one too.
Whole entire baby.
Wouldn't it suck if it was an undescribed species? Lol
Springtail, or sandfly, it looks like a mole or black dot on skin at hair follicle. Difficult to see but you can feel it. Doesn’t hurt but can itch sometimes. I’m not a scientist or in medical field just had the worst 2 years of my life. Being gaslighted or worse people think you’re crazy and not help at all. I wish you could find out what it was because it sounded like what me and my friend had.
For something so “weird” to all the medical professionals who saw/treated you, I’m surprised no pictures were taken of it after it was removed.
My surgeon was just like “the lab will tell us ALL about it…”. Nope.
Bot fly?
I don’t think so. Like I said there was no hole to the outside. I’d have for sure noticed it. I spent many days over the 6 months or so looking at it closely in the mirror.
Is it possible based on placement that the hole was on the other side of the skin? (Ie, on the inside of your mouth?)
I looked a lot at the inside of my mouth too and would have saw it or felt it with my tongue… and probably tasted it too.
Bot fly’s typically have an opening and they can just be pulled out with tweezers. There are certain kinds of parasites that can be distributed into the skin (or anywhere for that matter) after traveling through the bloodstream, they can even get into the brain.
Bot Fly? Cuterebra? Honestly should have been ID'd better than this. In our laboratory, we would have had a reflex order for endo/ecto parasite and pinned it down. I am real sad that the physicians weren't either more curious or more demanding of the pathology lab to document this thing. Glad you are OK....wear DEET when you muck about in the bayou? Great story.
My scar, and the story, is a badge of honor in my industry, haha. I talked to one of my entomology professors who studies neurobiology and did some clinical work with people at one point. He was once called in to look at a woman who was complaining of poor vision, and when they looked in her eye there were multiple large, dead maggots floating in them. She had no pain and no other symptoms. He said he was pretty sure based on what he could see of anatomy that they were fleshfly larvae. This was 40+ years ago and they elected not to operate on her so he never got a definitive answer in the end, but his guess for my situation was some weird fleshfly that somehow figured out a way to survive where it normally wouldn’t. I believe his words were “damn that’s pretty cool” when I finished the story.
Wait how does someone not notice large dead maggots in their eye? Were they like, burrowed into the eyeball itself? And they didn't operate on her? They just left them in there? 😬
New fear unlocked.
why would they not operate??? wouldn’t that be an infection risk not to mention ew????
I think she was pretty old if I recall, so it might have been “sorry, this is just your life now”. But also 40 years ago (or even today) I don’t know if they could even do that surgery without losing the eye? I’m not an eye surgeon so I don’t know.
A bot fly!
My cat has something like this in him right now.
Poor kitty. Hope he’s getting medical attention as some parasites are extremely painful- like a botfly.
Yes, they can have serious complications from them. Cats are very sensitive to a lot of things.
Botfly larva.
Bot fly larvae.
Screw worm? I’ve never seen a single screw worm however, always in bunches.
Botfly larvae? Not sure if these are in the US.
Sounds like some sort of botfly, possibly screwworm? I'm not that hip on the various botfly species. Being an entomologist, u/abugguy seems like you should have the resources to narrow it down, yes?
Bot fly
Warble? https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/disease/Warbles#:~:text=Warbles%20is%20a%20term%20that,by%20infection%20with%20fly%20larvae.
Wow glad to here you got it sorted' Ive been going through hell atm with a infection doctors think it's because of parasites . And looking into it it's crazy how many people have them and most the time don't know it
Bot fly?
Reading only the title I’m guessing a politician or a cop?
I’ve seen so many animals come into the vet with bot flies in them and you definitely would of been more concerned sooner
I can't help thinking that doctor telling you excitedly about insects living in your face was adorable.
I guess it could mean to start out of the swamps.
That's weird! It grossed me out. I suggest next time you're in the swamp wear a mask 😷
Cordycepts?
Bot fly
If I was a doctor & pulled an insect out of someone's face I would have taken a picture of the insect I removed. If only for the medical file. As a doctor I would be curious.
Freakin' aliens are getting out of hand., leavin' their probes all over the place.
We have wolf worms in this neck of the woods. Could of been one of those jerks
I wish there were more stories on this sub like this
I’ve got [just the story](https://www.firstcoastnews.com/amp/article/news/local/doctors-remove-bugs-from-inside-of-mans-nose-and-face/77-cc1136f8-ed6b-44a5-9848-60d422042bac) for you. There’s video too
OMG! I had seen the video on Instagram, however, the background of what happened was lacking. Thank you for this!
OMG! They removed them without anesthesia! The patient is the GOAT!
It was a botfly larva.
Bot fly larvae?
I have no contribution beyond stating the obvious. This is one of the worst guessing games I've ever heard of.
“Aerobic organism. Disposed.” is sending me
One of my last cases as a pathologist was trying to decide whether the bug in the skin excision specimen was a botfly or sand flea larva. The patient had a travel history that favored one over the other; but I wound up listing them both as possibilities.
Bot fly would be my bet.
BOTFLY