http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2006%2F014907&WO=2006%2F014907&DISPLAY=\
STATUS

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP1749534.html

Oh, the selection in the hookworm market! I can a) wait and get no more larvae; if I’m not better by X amount of months I can b) get more slowly – 2 or 3 every few weeks or c) get more quickly and possibly suffer the ill effects. I’m impatient. I want wellness now. But which method to choose? I deliberate constantly.

The choice of worm burden seems arbritrary. Throw up your hands and choose between 10 and 50 worms, with no idea of how many will remain, how many at a time will “stick”, how the body will react. Worm Russian Roulette.

This study showed that 2 already infected healthy men, who added 50 worms, ended up with an immune response that basically killed the new infection, or displaced some of the old ones, so that they ended up with the same worm burden they started with:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16890593

So how many to add? Who knows? I don’t want to go back to Mexico to get reinfected. I live in the same town as Jasper, so perhaps we could reinfect locally. I don’t think this therapy should be illegal in the US – if it is proven that we as human animals are meant to coexist with helminths, then we should be able to get free worms, or just pick up a prescription in the larval section of your favorite drug store. But that is probably never going to happen. Most people will have to wait decades for the drug derivative.

But I am a walking scientific experiment. Dr. Pritchard gets the deserved admiration for infecting himself with 50 larvae as part of the dose-ranging trials of hookworm. They define the necessary eggs per gram of stool for therapeutic effect as 50 eggs/gram. All doses; 10, 25 and 50 (the woman who got 100 had to terminate due to relentless vomiting and diarrhea) resulted in the necessary egg count. I should test to see where I’m at, but I don’t know how.

Yet I’m tired, still so tired. Will more worms boost me or simply add to the fatigue? The Crohn’s study is still recruiting, so no one knows yet if 10 worms will be enough. The average worm burden in New Guinea is 25 worms, and one assumes they are gotten in little doses, starting from childhood, not 10 or 20 all at once. Which is where “trickle therapy” comes in. In an interview, Dr. Pritchard said,

“The average worm burden of a person in Papua New Guinea is 25 worms. It’s this sort of level that we think is beneficial. Whether we can mimic this in a hospital in Nottingham is difficult to say, because we’ll be giving ten worms in one dose after the person has already developed allergy. So the trial may not work this time. We may have to go back to ‘trickle infections’ where we give small numbers over an increased length of time.”

So should I try the trickle infection now, for lack of better knowledge? So many choices, just one body to experiment on. What do I do?

As we’re waiting for the train, my husband runs in to get batteries at the kiosk – and there’s a man across the tracks who is staring at me. I wonder at first if this is Jasper, the owner of the hookworm clinic. But this guy is strange looking. A little too bundled and sweaty. He keeps looking at me and I keep thinking… is it Jasper?

We drag our bags onto the trolley and selfishly take up 2 entire benches with my cooler full of special food, my pads, 20 pairs of underwear, changes of clothes.  Crohn’s-disease luggage is extra large. The man who isn’t Jasper stands against the wall near me, staring, then finally closes his eyes.

We take off. The man is sweating, crouching now against the wall. His mouth is wide open, eyes rolled back into his sockets, whites showing, drool glistening against his chin. I’m glad he isn’t Jasper, because I wouldn’t want this guy’s hookworms.

...last chance to turn back...

Finally the train arrives in San Ysidro, we get off and join the exodus marching towards the border. We walk through the concrete pedestrian maze over the real freeway that connects the US with Mexico.  No customs. No passports. I am thankful I don’t have an attack of diarrhea, since there is no toilet paper in the bathrooms, and God knows what infectious diseases are on the faucet. We are in Mexico! Last 24 hours to be parasite free. Tomorrow, I will have 10 squirmy little friends. I’ll be thousands of dollars poorer, but rich with possibility.

The irony is, I never went to Mexico for fear of catching parasites.

It better work.

I feel oddly giddy. Drunk on the ridiculousness of what I’m doing. Tomorrow I’m driving to Mexico to get hookworms!

The phone rings, and it is my father. I tell him I’m going to a clinic connected to UCSD, and am getting an experimental drug that is a natural immunosuppressive.

“You’re not going to some quack in Tijuana, are you?”

“No, Dad.”

“Because there’s all sorts of charlatans down there.”

“I know, Dad.”

“You’re staying at a hotel?”

“Yeah, overnight in San Diego,”  I lie.

“You’re not going to some Mexican hotel, are you?”

“No, Dad.”

“Because you can catch anything down there. How much is this costing you?”

“Oh, a few thousand dollars.” He whistles. “They’re not getting you hooked on some radical therapy are they?” I almost choke on my homemade SCD yogurt.

“No, Dad.” I lie and reassure him, as I sit here, afraid.

What the hell am I doing?