[FlowerDogsMom]

Hi there -

I have 2 theories about how this has happened to me - I'm not sure which is correct, maybe neither... but what's odd (or one of the odd things) is that I saw an Infectious Disease specialist in December and told him based on my research I felt I have some type of filarial nematode. Now that I'm reading more and more about Morgellons, I see that others may think this disease (or part of it) is right along those lines...

In 2002 I went on my honeymoon to Mexico. We were south of Cancun and also traveled inland. While I was there I sustained 3 bites by an unusual looking black and red fly. The bites were raised and lasted on my wrist for at least 3 months. At the time my husband and I joked about it because it always takes so long for me to heal... but even for me it went on and on. It never dawned on me to ask a doctor about it. When I read about the filarial nematodes, they can be transmitted by bug bites and they incubate for a period of time before symptoms start. This is my first theory.

My health has been declining and I've been home on disability since 2003 (I'm 37).

My second theory is that what I have is zoonotic and may have come from my dog or one of my cats. My dog swims in a local creek. Last summer there was evidently some contruction debris in the water after a flood and a boom let the debris go... after that my dog had eye and ear infections... and was just not right. She continues to have problems with her eyes and ears and fevers. I told the vet at the time that both of my cats were also unwell though I couldn't exactly put my finger on what was wrong - just lots of different symptoms at different times... things like periodic vomiting, fevers, lethargy, skin scabs... One night my one cat was picking something off her fur and I had the sensation that I breathed in a cloud of something... and not long after I could feel movement in my nasal passages... I had clear gel worms coming out of my eyes. I had skin hatchings and burrow marks and the start of my parasite odyssey.

I guess there is a third thing... I swam in a local lake (not stagnant and lots of people were swimming there). It was several days later that I felt the first skin crawling and had white egg like things in spots that I felt bites.... the creepy crawlies all over my body - especially over my eyes/eyelids, then a couple weeks later I had my first skin sores. The doctor assumed it was some type of mite and gave me miticide to use and told me to take my pets to the vet.

When I did, the vet said they were all clean (though I still really felt something was wrong with all of them). The vet looked at something that came out of a track on my skin and found something she'd never seen before... which lead me to call the county health dept... who called the state health dept. Eventually I was told I had a Chalcid Wasp - which is actually a parasitoid of a parasite - it can actually be a parasitoid of nematodes. While researching this I saw an image on Wikepedia of something just like the clear gel things that come out of my eye ... which is how I started reading about nematodes and then filarial nematodes...

I'm not sure what happened (I changed my diet, I worked on detoxing my body) but something caused the sores to disappear as mysteriously as they appeared. And then some other health problems got my main attention until about 10 weeks ago when I started with skin sores again.

Then I started to think about the things going on around me that I'd been ignoring due to other priorities... the fact that some type of fibers were growing out of the toenails of my dog, the fact that little white triangle things fly around me, the fact that strange fibers which all look identical (something like crinkle french fries) are sticking out of my microfiber couch, the fact that I have red and blue and black fibers often in that same shape on my body or in my ears, the fact that the little white egg like things which hurt have reappeared, also, the black specks, my hair is taking on a life of it's own... it falls out by the handful and it moves like Medusa - whether it's still in my head or I'm holding it in my hand or I'm pulling it out of my clothes - my long haired cat has the same thing going on in her hair. My husband's hair is also moving and he has growing fibers in his clothes even though he can't see them (he's going blind). One of the freakiest things is my carpet has fibers that seem to be growing... and my bedding has threads that are getting longer... Anyway, I started thinking about all of these things and the fact that fibers are coming out of my sores - I pull lots of them out with tweezers.... and I started reading again about Morgellons... and here I am!

So, like the rest of you I'm trying to do what I can to eradicate this from my home and family.

Take care, FlowerDogsMom, aka Katherine