It started with fleas on the dog. The house got infested. Then the dog got black/grey stuff where his skin had been pink and his hair thinned. I thought mites.Then little specks of white, salt grain looking stuff and little black specks in the bed and on me. Brought in by new boyfriend on dirty camp blankets? Left behind by the doggie? Gritty. Itchy. Treated house and dog with flea killer, washed bedding. Better.
Then one night I found scalp had little dandruffy lumps, which when scratched revealed a buried spot that felt like a tiny cyst. When pressed they bled, or produced a clear, watery liquid that smelled chemical-y -- like ... ammonia? I went nuts popping these things that night. The liquid dissolved my fingernails almost immediately, made my fingertips numb and the skin there peeled off by morning. Yikes.
I'd been using meth a bit recently and thought that must be it. My skin must be trying to rid my body of toxins. Over the next couple of months it got better, then worse, then better, almost well. Then one day about three weeks ago, scalp got super itchy and was suddenly covered in white "sand," appeared all over whole scalp overnight. Sandy stuff falls off scalp, gets in my hair, falls into eyebrows and eyelashes. Then gets in my eyes and collects like wet silica, gritty clumps of goo. Also burns. Is caustic. Makes me crazy. Won't wash off, can't get rid of it. It lands on my face and sticks to my skin.
Next, bowel incontinence! Surprise! No warning. Not diarrhea. No, green, sticky, clay-like feces that I had to scrape off of my legs to remove, as water did not phase it, only to find upon touch that it, too, was full of sandy grit. No more surprises since then (last weekend), but poop is still sticky, sandy, green clay that clings to the inside of my rectum and irritates it. It's full of sand, it is uncomfortable. I'm ready to stop eating. I think I'm ingesting the debris from my scalp. Disgusting. It lands on my lips and tastes salty. It gets in my nose. I think I'm inhaling it, my breathing has started to sound like I'm hollow and on a machine.
By mid week my tears began to burn my eyeballs as if they were made of acid. My skin is losing all tone as if the muscle underneath is dissolving.
Yesterday my saliva got very salty, soapy, foamy, and kind of caustic. I can't make myself swallow it and have been secretly spitting it out. Today I spit some into a glass. It's murky, burned my eyes when I tried to smell it, it's foamy and after a few minutes I could see a silica-like sediment collecting at the bottom of the glass. WTF?
I have been on the internet searching for anything remotely related to these weird and varied symptoms for weeks. I cannot think of anything else. I am being tortured from within and driven to total distraction. Today I found an article online about myiasas. Tiny fly infestation by parasitic micro flies. It matches most everything. But the thought that parasitic flies are burrowing into my every orifice and are in my intestines freaks me out so bad I could scream. And I'm supposed to take this story to my PCP? She'll say I'm crazy. I have no doubt. If she'll even hear out my whole story.
Everyone I have confided in, any part of this, thinks it's meth or parasite psychosis. But does any psychosis ever make anyone incontinent or cause open, weeping, scalp sores that burn off their fingernails? You don't just imagine those things. Plus, I am in no other ways psychotic. Is psychosis that narrow and specific?
For God's sake help me. I think I'm dying and I'm pretty sure no one will even listen to me. And if I even mention the drug use, well, they'll not only not treat whatever I have now, they'll write off anything I ever say as just a drug abuser's ploy or ravings for the rest of my life. You know it. Whether I ever take so much as another aspirin again. Can anyone help me? Anyone?