Man has earned his right to live in this world through evolution over a million years. The bacteria, the viruses and the fungi that inhabit this planet in numbers far exceeding ours have had to give us this right to co-inhabit this planet with them. They have allowed us the so called piece of the cake. But all this has not come easily to the human race. As H G Wells so beautifully expresses in his book 'War of the Worlds', we have had to earn this status through natural selection and constant struggle.
But sometimes our defences do fail us and we fall victim to slimiest of creatures that live around us. Maggots form just one part of this spectrum of dread. Just the other day i Saw a patient with pyogenic meningitis who was carrying truck load of these worms in her facial sinuses. The patient had ended up in my ward because her lumber puncture revealed a grim picture of pyogenic meningitis and she was very sick. Initially my efforts circled around getting her out of immediate danger vis a vis providing her adequate cover for her inflammation of her meninges. My second concern was to find the source of infestation and try and get rid of it. My counterparts in the ENT department were not eager to take the dive so i asked one of my real good friends from the same fraternity to come to the rescue. And so it happened that two of us donned our protective gear, namely face masks and latex gloves and took a dive into the nosy terrain of out patient under torch light. Our hope _ to find and extract as many of the creatures as we could. Our final count after an hour long search and kill operation, 30.
The story doesn't end here. The maggot champions that we were, we paraded our collection of maggots around the hospital in hope of praise for our not so delightful endeavour. Pictures were taken and maggot memories were made.
Maggots are scared of turpentine oil. Turpentine oil makes them run for cover and thus it proved the magic bullet in our maggot hunt. they say maggots are fly larvae; i don't believe "them"!
Just for record Maggots have been used since at least American Civil War as a form of therapy to clean and clear dirty wounds on human body. Maggots like to eat and dine on dead necrotic tissue and when wounds get bad clean sterilized maggots can serve as the city sweepers cleaning the mess bacteria and viruses leave behind after them.
This maggot story ha served to do one thing. It has brought me down to earth on one count. Just after i had done the maggot search and kill operation i was thinking of writing a case report on my patient presuming the incident to be a rare one in the modern world. To my utmost discontent almost all the doctors i met narrated more than one instance of having seen maggot infestation in their patients. But there was some pride left to be salvaged. The pride of knowing that i helped my patient get rid of these creatures and helped save her from an impending disaster. But, sadly, that were not to be the case for long. It so stands that in having removed the maggots i deprived my patient of her ability to get rid of her necrotic tissue. Ah well! i still think i did the right thing. At least she doesn't have to see the snails falling out of her nostrils every now and then and creating an embarrassment for her (not that she was in her senses to realize what ordeal had befallen her).
But sometimes our defences do fail us and we fall victim to slimiest of creatures that live around us. Maggots form just one part of this spectrum of dread. Just the other day i Saw a patient with pyogenic meningitis who was carrying truck load of these worms in her facial sinuses. The patient had ended up in my ward because her lumber puncture revealed a grim picture of pyogenic meningitis and she was very sick. Initially my efforts circled around getting her out of immediate danger vis a vis providing her adequate cover for her inflammation of her meninges. My second concern was to find the source of infestation and try and get rid of it. My counterparts in the ENT department were not eager to take the dive so i asked one of my real good friends from the same fraternity to come to the rescue. And so it happened that two of us donned our protective gear, namely face masks and latex gloves and took a dive into the nosy terrain of out patient under torch light. Our hope _ to find and extract as many of the creatures as we could. Our final count after an hour long search and kill operation, 30.
The story doesn't end here. The maggot champions that we were, we paraded our collection of maggots around the hospital in hope of praise for our not so delightful endeavour. Pictures were taken and maggot memories were made.
Maggots are scared of turpentine oil. Turpentine oil makes them run for cover and thus it proved the magic bullet in our maggot hunt. they say maggots are fly larvae; i don't believe "them"!
Just for record Maggots have been used since at least American Civil War as a form of therapy to clean and clear dirty wounds on human body. Maggots like to eat and dine on dead necrotic tissue and when wounds get bad clean sterilized maggots can serve as the city sweepers cleaning the mess bacteria and viruses leave behind after them.
This maggot story ha served to do one thing. It has brought me down to earth on one count. Just after i had done the maggot search and kill operation i was thinking of writing a case report on my patient presuming the incident to be a rare one in the modern world. To my utmost discontent almost all the doctors i met narrated more than one instance of having seen maggot infestation in their patients. But there was some pride left to be salvaged. The pride of knowing that i helped my patient get rid of these creatures and helped save her from an impending disaster. But, sadly, that were not to be the case for long. It so stands that in having removed the maggots i deprived my patient of her ability to get rid of her necrotic tissue. Ah well! i still think i did the right thing. At least she doesn't have to see the snails falling out of her nostrils every now and then and creating an embarrassment for her (not that she was in her senses to realize what ordeal had befallen her).
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