The WTF Of The Day

I guess the guinea worm story wasn't nightmare inducing enough for me this week:

VIDEO: 40-Year-Old Fetus Found Inside Elderly Woman

Screw This

What was supposed to be an inch to two inches of snow eventually changing over to rain yesterday turned into more than half a foot of snow and ice. Our annual girl's shopping day ended up being canceled. Now there is call for almost a half a foot tomorrow. I want to scream.

And while over on the Weather Channel's website, I read an article about diseases threatening humanity. And went to a link discussing the guinea worm. Just.....this:

Of all the many remarkable things about the guinea worm, here is something particularly remarkable: this journey causes its victim no pain. It’s not a fleeting infection, either. It takes the guinea worms three to four months to become sexually mature. The males only get to be 4 centimeters long; the females reach 25 times that length. Most of that extra space in their bodies is taken up by their uterus. If people have both males and females in their body, they can find each other and mate. After this internal congress, the male guinea worm creeps off to some corner of the body and dies. The female, meanwhile, swells with progeny. Three million embryos begin to grow inside her.

It takes months for the multitudes she contains to grow to the point when they’re ready to leave their mother–and their human world. She begins her journey to ground, slithering through the connective tissue until she reaches her host’s leg and creeping down further towards the foot. Only now, over a year after taking in the guinea worms, does a person become aware of what’s been happening. The guinea worm mother pierces the skin from the inside and releases an irritant that creates a painful blister–”burning without cease” as one tropical disease expert once put it.

There is only one balm for this pain: water. When people splash water on the blister, the guinea worm responds by twisting into a contraction and vomiting embryos from her mouth. The pain subsides for a while, but the blister swells again until another splash of water delivers another batch of guinea worm babies. The pain lasts, off and on, for months–until the parasite’s entire uterus has emptied its millions of embryos. Some of them may be lucky enough to end up in a pond full of hungry water fleas, where they can continue the cycle. (from Nat Geo)

 












Also, I am half tempted to research why I have been craving bananas so much lately, but I am afraid I may bring on my next hypochondriac meltdown.

ETA 12/14: I just Googled pictures of guinea worms and OH GOD WHY