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Parasitic Infection Flummoxes Victims and Doctors
Toxictoy writes "Imagine having a disease that is so controversial that doctors refuse to treat you. Individuals with this disease report disturbing crawling, stinging, and biting sensations, as well as non-healing skin lesions, which are associated with highly unusual structures. These structures can be described as fiber-like or filamentous, and are the most striking feature of this disease. In addition, patients report the presence of seed-like granules and black speck-like material associated with their skin. Sound like a bad plot for a Sci-Fi channel movie? Think again - it could be Morgellon's Syndrome."
This is referred to as "delusions of parasitosis".
http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic939.htm
The *sensation* they have is "real", not to sound like Morpheus: feels like bugs in skin. The sensation goes away quickly when Pimozide is prescribed.
It's not all that uncommon.
It's very hard to convince patients that they need Pimozide, and not a can of "Raid" to spray on themselves.
There's another web site that has been around longer relating to the same issue:
http://www.skinparasites.com/
They misinterpret lint, fibers, dust, and other debris as parasites; sort of a variant of hearing voices/OCD/other disorders where sensations are spurious or can't be correctly decoded.
The success will be similar to what dermatology proper can achieve anyway. Modern dermatology cannot cure eczema. Most varieties of psoriasis are uncurable as well. Add in neurodermatitis and a few other skin conditions and you get a fairly long list of conditions which the doctors cannot deal with. They poke at it from different angles like tribal shamans and the success rate is about the same. The reality is that we know so little about the human skin, it is not even funny. Just take Pimecrolimus and eczema. Nobody has even the faintest idea why it works. Staph and eczema? What is the cause and what is the effect? So on so fourth. I read the RTFA and I can understand some of the patients described in it who are taking a gun to a dermatologist appointment. I have wanted to do that on couple of occasions myself.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I think it's a viral campaign for an upcoming Robert Downey Jr movie ... :)
The *sensation* they have is "real", not to sound like Morpheus: feels like bugs in skin.
Yes, this is (IMO) one of the more bizarre aspects of psychosis - it's not just the the people suffering from it *believe* in things that aren't true, they actually experience some of them directly.
I've known a couple of people with schizophrenia, and while it's a terrible condition, it gave me a lot of respect for the power of our minds.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
What's the difference between a medical student and dog crap?
No one goes out of their way to step on dog crap.....
You are quite correct--best to get an EKG/watch for extrapyramidal side effects, but, I have found that very low doses of Pimozide are effective, on the order of 1 or 2 mg a day, not a full antipsychotic dose.
Most difficult therapeutic maneuver is building trust--not at all easy to get them to take anything at all. I just try to be very honest, reassuring, kind--sort of like Mr. Rogers.
UCLA Med School: awesome....congrats.
Step 1: Get a written statement from one, two, or perferably, three GP's or dermatologists you have an undiagnosable skin condition or other aliment that is not psychological in nature.
Step 2: Get a phone book or google and find out the nearest university medical research center in your geographic area.
Step 3: Armed with the affadavits in Step 1, contact professors at the university specializing in pathology, dermatology, biology.. just about any -ology except geology, or phrenology, haha. You might have to try a couple, but you WILL find someone interested in your case. Those people have the training, resources, and credentials to find out if there is something novel about your condition. They will pay you no mind without Step 1.
Good luck.
..don't panic
I've noticed that at least one of the supposed links are dead. As for how they got the media to buy in ...
:)
The wikipedia article was created in Feb of 2005. It contained a one-sentence summary and a link to the website. The website is registered by a dns proxy company, so there's no DNS contact information. Ooh, another bizarre coincidence - the supposed "national news broadcast" has been postponed until "june or july"; release date of the movie is July 7th. When looking at it in a paranoid mindset, lots of things on the site are curious. Including the DISTINCT lack of decent contact information. I've found only a few email addresses so far. Ironically, the only person whose domain I've been able to nail down as non-anonymous is the supposed webmaster. And his site is cheesily amusing in its own right.
The Scanner Darkly had its recent release date, September 16th, pushed back to some time in March, 2006." - as you can see, it's been bumped around a fair amount.
Sounds very similar to what I did to cure mine. Avoid all shampoos with parfum/perfume, same with soaps and the like. I use a dead sea mud soap which my skin loves and it kills my fungal psoriasis dead. I also use Pears transparent soap on my face and let myself dry in a towelled dressing gown. As a result my skin is in the best state its been in, in years. My dermatologist hadn't the time to be arsed, so I did this all myself with trial and error like the above poster.
Doctors and medical researchers, like those in any other scientific field, have been taught a certain paradigm for understanding health and disease.
Yes, and that paradigm is: Examine the evidence.
Anything not explainable within that framework tends to be overlooked or ignored
Yep. When there's no evidence, doctors and medical researchers tend to ignore you, as do scientists and indeed all sane people.
just look at the battles the homeopathic community has to fight; some of them are wackos perhaps
And the remainder are frauds.
but many of them have treatments superior to those of "modern" medicine.
No. Modern medicine can provide sugar pills and distilled water just as well as any homeopath.
As compared to the ridiculously small amount of chemicals that accumulate in "organic" food, perhaps? Everything material is "chemical", all matter is composed of chemical elements. It's ridiculous to assume that a chemical compound is automatically suspect of being dangerous if it was produced in a human factory instead of a plant or animal in nature.
Think of all the extremely toxic chemical compounds found in nature: snakes, spiders, scorpions, mushrooms, salmonella, botulism, anthrax. Think of curare, strychnine, nicotine, nature produces many toxins that are more dangerous than the most mortal chemical weapon of mass destruction man has invented.
Everything you say is good up until here.
3. Society in general and the marketing departments of various household goods: all of the various soaps & cleansers which promise to kill bugs when you use them. You're only supposed to use soap to clean your hands off - remove the stuff which doesn't belong there - remove as in get it off of your hands, not kill some of the bugs and leave a small number of immune ones in place. Eugenics takes over and we begin breeding superbugs.
Antibacterial soaps are a marketing ploy and nothing more...all soaps are antibacterial. How well a given soap removes bacteria from your hands is directly proportional to how well you clean your hands (i.e: do you just get them wet, or do you really soap up and scrub them down). Bacteria aren't some magical things that can survive the same conditions that will remove dirt, grime, oil, protein, salt, and metals from your hands. Some companies throw in a little bit of antiseptic to get people to buy their soap, but it is no more or less effective than regular soap, and at the concentrations present, it is highly unlikely to cause resistant bacterial strains to develop.