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Parasitic botfly removed from woman's head (video)

By sciencepunk on September 10, 2009.

Vanessa of NatureBreak.org came back from Belize with an unwelcome hitch-hiker - a parasitic botfly larvae that had burrowed into her scalp. So she did what any great blogger would do: made a very well-produced video showing its eviction. Not for the squeamish!

via BoingBoing

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That. Was. So. Cool.

I loved her concern--"is it in frame?" Now that is a scientific woman!!

One question--the "bottle" approach, it seems to me, ought to be less about "smoking it out", and more about simple suction. The burning match should evacuate much of the air from the bottle, creating a vacuum which would then suck the larva out... except that they did not, it appears, keep an airtight seal (difficult on the scalp) or keep it on long enough. It would be sort of like the trick of getting a boiled egg into a milk bottle.

Once saw a teenage patient back from south America with dozens of the things. Ended up in intensive care, not because they were dangerous but because we felt compelled to keep the patient sedated due to the gross factor as we removed them over days and days. Amongst other things that were tried: laying raw meat on the patient's head, Vaseline to block oxygen, and many hours with tweezers. Rather disturbing.

Disgusting and awesome at the same time.

I loved her concern--"is it in frame?"

Yeah, that was fucking hilarious! There is an entire genre of botfly-removal Youtubes out there. Just search Youtube for botfly and you get several hundred.

That was fantastic, in the most horrorfying way. There is no way in hell I'm ever going to Belize....

Oh the pus made me gag! I hope they smooshed ALL of that yellow pus out afterward, and disinfected the wound. First flush the hell out of it with saline, the little pocket the grub created. Otherwise it would close up without draining. Ewwwww ewwww ewwwww ewwwww.

Are they certain the grub was removed in its entirety, the mouth pieces it was clinging with as well? I worry it will be like removing a tick, where sometimes the head or mouthpieces can remain in the skin, causing a bad infection.

OK I will get out of "worried mother mode" now! It was really cool to see it removed. I just worry about the infection and cleaning that wound.