The Saga of “Say Hello to My Little Friend” Ends

My little tapeworm larva friend happily lived out the polar vortex of January and February warmly ensconced in a comfortables cyst in my liver. It had a hibernaculum of fine quality living off my consumption of organic pork, pastured chicken eggs, Belgian chocolate, and peanut butter. Because I could not tolerate the anti-parasite meds to get rid of the parasite, I could not have the traditional means of removing a hydatid cyst which involves four months of meds and an injection into the cyst of concentrated saline solution. The meds were harming me more than the parasite so… the last, but most invasive option was surgical removal of the cyst. 

Echinococcus larva from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention website.

There are plenty of possible bad side effects of the surgery beyond all the regular problems, but the greatest problem was the potential that during surgery the cyst would leak and parasite residue would spread through my body where the parasite could establish a new home in even less convenient areas for surgery like the lungs or the brain. I might be tolerant but that idea is too much for even me!

Fortunately, the surgery went well with complete removal of the intact cyst (imagine a thick walled hollow ball). A smaller second cyst in my liver was tested and found to be absent of parasitic material. Because the removal of the main cyst left a big hole in my liver that likely would fill with abdominal fluid, the surgeon opted to stuff the hole with a portion of the greater omentum, which is the large apron-like fold of visceral peritoneum that hangs down from the stomach. The omentum functions to store fat so in essence a positive side effect of the operation was to store my abdominal fat in the liver hole. I essentially had a ‘tummy tuck!” Plus, I came home with a bikini shave I had not anticipated. Who knew that the hospital doubled as a spa?

The test results from the second smaller liver cyst revealed no parasite material.

I was in hospital for five days and am now recovering nicely at home thanks to Sam! I am eating enough chocolate and tea biscuits to help fill the empty hole in my liver with fat. I was lucky the parasite was where it was on the outer surface of my liver, anywhere else and things wouldn’t have gone so well! Sorry little parasite buddy but you were just too dangerous to hang out in my neighbourhood.