So, my stool results are back. Negative for ova. My “incubation” results are back: wormless. Here I am, almost a year later from the first infection, waiting for nothing. Wormless!
I think I’ve been wormless since Spring, according to my symptoms and CRP. My guess is the dosing method we chose caused an inflammatory immune response that expelled some of the 10 resident worms, and kept the new ones from establishing. Because I was having amazing efficacy until my last few doses; I had gained 17 pounds, was sleeping through the night, was feeling a lot more bouyant, and of course, had the blood results to prove it. (CRP went from 5 to 0.9 with normal being < 0.8 SED went from 35 to 6 ) And from April 18, I slowly descended back into the state where I am now; ten pounds lost, pain, urgency, some solid stools if I am perfect with my diet, fatigued, etc.
So, I get to start over again! How thrilled I am by the prospect. This time, I think I’ll try 10 worms, once, and wait. Test my eosoniphils (which rose from 75 to 192, but were still well under the normal rage of 0-400.) I will also test my egg count from week 6 on. I may try Prednisone during the critical immune response, from weeks 3-10 or so, though I don’t like thinking about that. (Always fear that I won’t come off it.) But I need to get the worms to “stick”, and don’t want to go on like this for another year, waiting and wondering what to do.
I hope it isn’t that my immune system simply kills off the worms, never allowing for a population to take up residence.
Or, I try TSO, which provides biweekly stimulation. I can’t afford it, but I may get a pig and learn how to gather the ova myself, meaning I only need to buy a few doses. I don’t want to think about that parasite now, I’m still going to try hookworms.
But I’m very dissappointed that I didn’t test sooner, have suffered all these months for nothing, and that I chose a stupid dosing schedule without researching it further. If it all works, then great. But if that dosing acted like an immunization, meaning that all future infections I will mount enough of a response to keep them from living, well…I don’t like to think about it. I hope I have evolution on my side. How many people are immune to helminths? I’d really like to know.
So I get to reinfect. Will I respond the same as the first time? Will I get arthritis, edema, diarrhea, fever, etc? Will I be sick for Christmas again? Will I be ill for the Keystone Symposia? No answers to these questions, I just get to experiment all over again on myself. Lovely.
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