Little Baby Botflies NOMing on my back

Last Monday night I found myself driving to the ER around 11 PM in fear of validating that I have three botflies in my back. Botflies are parasites that lay their larvae on mosquitos, which then transfer the larvae to mammalian hosts (like myself); the larvae then burrow into the hosts skin, where they will continue to grow for 6-8 weeks, when they then crawl out of their hole and leave the host, to lay their own larvae.  We had learned about these parasites in my Belize: Rainforest, Reefs, and Ruins class when we read a book, Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz, that discussed Alan’s run-in with a botfly and how he had to have it removed.  After all my other bug bites had gone away, three on my back had gotten bigger and started to be quite painful/itchy.  Last Saturday night I woke up at 3 AM unable to sleep because of this pain, but still convinced myself it was not botflies and eventually went back to bed.  On Sunday I had a few friends look at them; they couldn’t really tell what they were, but they were shocked at how large and red they were, and suggested I should maybe go to the hospital to have it checked out.  I thought about going, but ultimately decided that I’d wait and try some more home remedies before making a huge deal over it.  I tried taking a 45 minutes Epsom salt bath – which was supposed to make the botflies want to come out for air and then drown/float to the surface; that did not work.  I had also been trying to spray colloidal silver on the bites, spreading the jungle salve that we made with Polo (traditional Maya healer) on them, and taking Rosita Arvigo’s “Traveler’s Tonic” (Rosita is an American who has been living/practicing Maya healing in Belize for about 30 years); none of these remedies helped much – although I did feel like things were more active (pinching/itching) after I put the topical treatments on.  On Monday when I was hanging an art show the middle muscles of my back became extremely tense and hard to move, as if something was pinching on the nerve endings.  I still wasn’t thoroughly convinced a trip to the ER was necessary, but later that evening I had Googled enough and was paranoid enough to be willing to get a second opinion.

After sitting in the waiting room for an hour and a half I finally got to lie on an examining bed and wait even longer for the nurse to come in.  When he was asking me your run-of-the-mill questions, he asked if I regularly take any medicine or supplements.  I answered by saying, “not regularly, but if I need something I usually stick to herbal or homeopathic remedies”.  In response to my remark he said quite snarkily, “you know you have to be careful with that stuff, it can be more dangerous than they let you think”.  This statement almost enraged me to the point of walking out of the hospital.  However, considering that I had already waited an hour and a half to get this far, I figured I’d stick around to see if someone at least knew what botflies were, and if that was in fact what was in my back.  The first doctor that came in had no idea what botflies were, but he came back with a second, older doctor who said that he had pulled botflies out of his wife years ago in the Peace Corps in Africa.  After examining them with a magnifying glass he was able to see a little bit of movement from one of the holes, and although he said it was hard to tell because they seemed very premature, he was pretty sure they were botflies.  Before leaving the hospital they gave me a prescription for an antibiotic to prevent possible infection, but I am not an antibiotic person – especially if it is for a preventative measure.  I figure if it gets infected I will deal with it then, but why weaken my body when it is already tolled by hosting 3 parasites?

the Doctor put gauze & tape over the bites for the night, hence the tape marks...

The next day I spoke with one of the Belizeans whom we stayed with on our trip and she gave me the following instructions to get them out:

EITHER 1a. Mix tobacco (= to 1 cigarette amount for each hole) with vicks vapor rub (I used a “hippie” version of that, which I bought at GreenStar) OR 1b. Mix tobacco (= to 1 cigarette amount for each hole) with rubbing alcohol, 2. Shower OR  clean the affected area with soap or rubbing alcohol, 3. Place tobacco mixture over each hole, 4. Quickly cover with industrial duct tape, sealed very well, 5. Leave on for AT LEAST 1.5 days, this suffocates them and they try to come up for air, but are instead negatively affected by the tobacco mixture, 5. When affected area stops itching the botflies are dead, 6. Pull off duct tape RAPIDLY (NOT slowly) and the botflies should come with – you shouldn’t have to pull them out (they won’t crawl out of the hole completely, just enough to try to get air and then they will die in the tobacco mixture and get stuck to the duct tape).

tobacco/"vicks" mixture

duct taped up!!

I went out and bought the ingredients on Wednesday.  Buying tobacco was interesting and kind of silly because I have never bought any tobacco products, other than shisha for my hookah, before in my life.  I went to one tobacco store a couple blocks away to see if they had loose leaf, somewhat pure tobacco, but they did not.  However, they directed me to another shop a little further away that did.  When I got there and told the woman working what I needed the tobacco for she was so enthralled/excited and asked to see.  After I showed her the bites she proceeded to ask me if she could have one and that she would even buy one off of me… but planning to keep them myself I declined, as after having to go through all of this and have them living in me, I couldn’t just give them away!  I did reassure her that I would be back to show her them when they finally came out.

I had a friend put this on Wednesday night and then immediately proceeded to drink a great deal of rum because I didn’t know if it would be painful or not.  Luckily it was not painful, other than the duct tape pulling at my skin whenever I moved my back much... On Friday I had a friend pull off the duct tape, and although the botflies had come to a head at each of their respective holes, and one was poking out a tiny bit, they did not come out with the treatment:

only really looks so gross because of the excess duct tape/tobacco/salve... but if you look closely at the bottom one you can kind of see a little guy sticking out... 

That meant it was time to quickly shower and reapply the suffocation treatment.  This time I left the treatment on for a about 50 hours, however when I had another friend pull off the duct tape they still did not come out:

the dark spot is just concentrated tobacco...

Once again I showered and had her reapply the treatment.  Now I’m sitting here, no longer much grossed out, but just utterly annoyed that these little buggers won’t come out yet.  I’m not sure if they are too premature and need to grow more, or are just super mutant botflies… I’m hoping for the former, although the latter would be kind of cool…  kind of… In either case, I am putting these suckers in a jar full of isopropyl (rubbing alcohol, which will act as a preservative) and will post an update when they finally decide to suffocate themselves and stop NOMing on my back!