Dreams and wounds and maggots

When's the last time you dreamt about maggots?

 

For me, it was last night. I dreamt that I was pulling giant maggots - I mean foot-long 20 pound maggots - out of my friends' legs using my bare hands. And once they were out, I kept trying to kill them without success. Stepping on them, chucking things at them, cursing them...how does one kill a 20 pound maggot?

 

I'm not losing my mind, I swear.

 

Presumably the dream was prompted by this leg.

 

It belongs to an older gentleman who started coming to clinic a few weeks ago. Grace messed around in the disgustingly smelly 10 inch long wound that circles almost his entire lower leg and found 2 tunnels...with maggots in them. So we went on our maggot regimen: daily dressing changes where we smear the openings of the holes with vaseline to suffocate the maggots out. When they show their ugly little heads, we ignore the goosebumps and squirming of our own stomachs, grab them with tweezers, and pull!

Fortunately, with good antibiotics and daily bandages, the infection is going away and it's been two weeks since we pulled our last maggot. The leg is showing very healthy pink/red tissue and the area above is softened and becoming less painful. Our patient says he's had the wound for 2 years, so we guess that it started with some sort of vascular issue which means it may never heal completely. But hopefully it can improve dramatically.

And hopefully, I will never dream about giant maggots ever again!