Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on May 21, 2006 20:55:34 GMT -6
Making Their Skin Crawl
Miles Lawrence, a landscaper in Florence, Texas, was supposed to be packing for a road trip to Las Vegas when he noticed his finger tingling. He stared in disbelief, he says, as "little spiny things" sprouted out of the skin where he'd just removed a splinter. He grasped one of the spines with tweezers and pulled.
Instantly, he says, a bolt of pain shot up his arm. He tugged on another one and the pain snaked up his neck. Then the really creepy part began. "It felt like bugs under the skin of my arms, in my joints," Lawrence says. "I freaked out."
Across the country, thousands of people complaining of the same horrifying phenomenon have formed an illness subculture. They share lists of symptoms, medical speculation and tales of run-ins with mainstream doctors at www.morgellons.org, the official Web site of a group called the Morgellons Research Foundation. It was founded in 2002 by Mary Leitao in McMurray, Pa. Leitao named the condition Morgellons Disease--after a disease with similar symptoms mentioned in a 16th-century medical text--while investigating a skin affliction on her then-2-year-old son.
Morgellons has barely registered on the radar of mainstream medicine. Few doctors have heard of the condition; fewer still know what to make of it. So when people walk into an examination room and announce they have Morgellons, they are often met with skepticism. Conflicts would seem to be inevitable.
BACTERIA CULTURE
When Miles Lawrence sped to the hospital, he was told he had delusional parasitosis and that the weird spines were "just dirt." But over the next week his symptoms got worse. He scratched at his elbows and noticed more fibers, and little black specks. "It was like they were fighting back," he says.
Eventually, he found his way to a medical professional who does take the idea of Morgellons seriously. Ginger Savely, a nurse practitioner in Austin, Texas, says she has treated 35 patients with symptoms. "Everyone tells the exact same story," she says. "It's just so consistent." Savely prescribes her patients a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics. "If I knew what I was dealing with," she says, "it would be easier to treat." Yet, she says, her patients--including Lawrence--improve within weeks.
Full story here: www.popularmechanics.com/science/medicine/1662162.html
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I wonder if Panspermia is at work here?...
