Bleeding Beasties

Nasty little sucker

I think most doctors and nurses would agree that the trouble with a lot of men is that they just don’t report sick soon enough.

What for me started as an itchy toe gradually turned into a bloody irritation.  Every step I took reminded me of it and it felt as though I had a pebble jammed up the front of my boot.  Did I go sick?  Did I hell.  I have things to do so a sore flaming toe wasn’t going to stop me.

Coincidentally, Alex took on a bit of a limp too.  As a very little boy, when we went for walks, he rode on my shoulders.  Not through laziness but because every little boy has the right to see the world from his father’s shoulders.  Once he hit four, however, he was far more interested in running around like a well flippered pinball so I noticed when he would only walk a few yards before asking for a ride.  I checked his feet carefully.  There was definitely something there.  Every time I touched his toe he squirmed.

The maid came into the room, took one look and said, ‘Bicho de Porco’. 

Pig beastie?  What the Hell is a Pig Beastie?

‘You have to cut it out,’ she went on, ‘and you must be careful not to burst the sack or the eggs will come out’.

‘EGGS! My son has EGGS in his toe!!’

‘And a pig beastie,’ she said.

‘How do you get it out then,’ I asked.

‘Have you got a razor blade?’

At this point Alex suddenly found his feet again and made an unsuccessful dash for the door.  I fetched a new packet of razor blades from the shop, a bottle of surgical spirits, some cotton wool and a darning kit for the needle while the maid hung onto him.

At this point Marcia arrived back from town.  Mothers can hear their child screaming from miles away so she was already in full homicidal mode when she burst into the room and demanded to know what the fuck was going on.

‘Bicho de Porco,’ said the maid.

‘Oh Alex, you poor thing,’ she crooned, ‘we have to cut it out.’

‘Daddy!’ he wailed, suddenly back on my side and making another dash for the door.

I pulled my boot off and stuck my toe under the maid’s nose.

‘Eek!  This one is bad!’ she said to Marcia.

So I went first, just to prove to Alex it didn’t hurt.  I was in agony.  The maid hacked away at my toe with the same vigour she scrubs my Y-Fronts up and down a cast concrete washboard every day.  There was no finesse, no pity, not even a hint of mercy. If I even flinched now, Alex would be over the TV and through the window into the garden.

‘Alex,’ I said in my most manly squeak, ‘do me a favour and pass me my cigarettes and lighter.’  He brought them to me, white as a sheet and with eyes as big as saucers.  Marcia handed me a Scotch without me even having to ask.  Jesus, how long was this going to take?  If the maid carried on slashing away like this she’d be excising my knee cap.

‘Done,’ the maid announced holding up something about the size of a pea but the colour of putrescent flesh.  Then she poured surgical spirit all over the bloody hole that was left.

‘Gosh,’ I quietly exclaimed.

Then it was Alex’s turn.

Gone was the mad razor blade wielding slasher of a maid.  Marcia’s cold, heartless gaze had softened to amber pools of honey oozing love and compassion.

‘Ow!,’ Alex exclaimed.

‘Go and get the boy a juice!’ Marcia ordered.  I trailed blood all the way to the shop and back, gave the lad his juice and then sulked on the sofa.

Tenderly the two of them, mother and maid, cooed like mating Turtle Doves and eased the beastie out of his foot; another translucent sack, a gob of gelatine. 

I wanted my revenge. These bastards thingymajigs had been munching on our toes.  Their eyes were too small to poke with red hot needles, never mind pokers.  I couldn’t even see any legs to slowly twist off one by one and besides, if I couldn’t hear them scream, where’s the fun in that?  So I plonked them in my ash tray and stubbed my cigarette out on them.

The sand flea is normally found in the sandy terrain of warm, dry climates. It prefers deserts, beaches, stables, stock farms, and the soil and dust close to farms.

Tunga penetrans is known as the chigger, jigger, chigoe, bicho do pé or sand flea. The head is angular, it has no comb of spines, and the thoracic segments are narrow at the top. The female feeds by burrowing into the skin of its host. The abdomen becomes enormously enlarged between the second and third segments so that the flea forms a round sac with the shape and size of a pea.

 

And it bloody hurts.

 

Ah, Diddums.  Thankfully Alex's beastie was fished out with just a needle.  Mine, and this is just a stock photo from Wikipedia, required the removal of most of my toenail but this at least gives you an idea.

So, in addition to Malaria, Typhoid, Bilharzia, Amoebic Dysentery, Black Water Fever (a complication of acute Plasmodium falciparum Malaria), Tick Bite Fever, goodness knows how many types of worms and Cutaneous leishmaniasis, I can add a bloody sand flea to the list of tropical ailments I have suffered.

 

Still, 'Flu is worse.  That knocks you out for at least three weeks.