Bot flies. ISH!

When I left for clinical this morning, I never imagined I'd leave having learned about a nasty fly that leaves its eggs nesting in human flesh.

If you have a burning desire to hear what a bot fly is, and why I now think it's existence is worse than gangrene, keep on...(fellow NP students, this one is for you!)

This is a bot fly.


It seems fairly innocent in and of itself, right?
Wrong!

These nasty creatures somehow attach their eggs to a smaller insect, such as a mosquito, and then that unknowing mosquito comes along and lands on someone's body. The body heat from the unlucky human host is enough to cause the eggs to drop off the mosquito's body, and the eggs drop onto human skin and burrow in right away.

Eeeew.

The eggs love the new environment. They grow.

The larva have spines and so as you might guess, can cause quite a painful skin condition.

The problem is that a person usually doesn't have any clue this is going on until the larvae have grown HUGE! (Or, huge for residing within human flesh if you ask me!)

To get the larvae coaxed out of human flesh, you can either use a piece of meat and lay it at the surface so they come out to feed (PUKE!), or you can smother the lesion in nail polish or Vaseline---something to starve them of oxygen---so they come to the surface (STILL PUKING!) and then you pull them out.

I have eliminated any future plans of traveling someplace far and exotic where bot flies exist. Still puking.

My fellow Nurse Practitioner students, take heart----this video is for YOU! (And anyone else who dares themselves to watch the removal process!)

Human Bot Fly Removal from Eli Adler on Vimeo.