Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me

Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me

by Kelli Norris

“Case Study A1: Pseudomyiasis-- August 28th, 1998. Subject: Morris Partridge, age 93 years old.”

I pushed the pause button on the recorder, moving the portable stand with the microphone closer to the old man lying in the hospital bed.

“Okay, Mr. Partridge just tell us your story in your own words. I will try to save any questions until the end. All right?”

The old man nodded and took a drink of water from the plastic cup on his bedside stand and watched me start the recorder again.

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said, sitting back in a chair with a notepad and pen in hand.

“Well…,” the old man started, and then stopped to clear his throat into a tissue he held in his hand. He took another sip of water and started again.

“I have always had canker sores. I’m not sure if that is the official medical term for them mind you but that is what me and mine called them. Anyway I have gotten canker sores since I was a small boy.

“At first I wasn’t sure what caused them. My mother would tell me it was soda pop but I thought she just told me that because she didn’t want me drinking too much pop. Of course I soon learned ma was right. If pop didn’t cause them it sure aggravated the hell out of them. So did orange juice and tomatoes or anything else with even mild citric acid in it.

“Needless to say it didn’t take me long to look ill on the fruit family. You try eating an orange that is stuffed full of pins and needles with the occasional razor blade thrown in and then you might understand the kind of pain we are talking about. The worst part is that they never go away. Not completely anyway. They get better but they are still there just waiting for me to eat spaghetti or some other delicious dish with just a hint of acid,” the old man chuckled and coughed into the tissue again before continuing.

“My ma, God bless her, started giving me vitamins so I wouldn’t get scurvy. When you’re a ten year old boy you think scurvy sounds kind of cool. I thought it would make me a pirate. I didn’t know about the bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I never saw no pirate with bloody gums.

“My poor mother got some much needed peace of mind when I discovered to my surprise that I could eat bananas totally pain free. I was hooked from the first bite and a lifelong love affair was born.

“I don’t want to exaggerate here, but I’m not kidding when I say I can probably count the number of times since I was a teenager that there were no bananas in my house. When I say I loved them, I mean I really loved them. I eat at least one banana every day. Well not anymore…,” he was seized by a coughing fit and doubled over, grabbing more tissues from the box on the nightstand.

He sat up after a minute, wiped his mouth and looked into the tissue with disgust, discarding it in the waste basket near his bed. I tried not to look but my eyes kept going back to that tissue. He filled his plastic cup with water from the small pitcher and took a long drink. He coughed just a little and grabbed new tissues from the box.

“So yeah, I loved bananas. I always had a bunch hanging off a hook in the kitchen ripening. I like them ripe. If they are too green they give me gas. I don’t know why that is but I’m sure there is some medical explanation. Anyhow, it has been so hot this summer that a bunch of bananas would be too ripe after just a few days so I really had to eat them quick or waste them.

“I never really noticed the flies until a few weeks ago. I hung fly strips and carried a fly swatter around the house but it never occurred to me to cover the bananas. It’s not like they were rotten bananas just ripe. I made sure I ate them all up long before they were black. I mean they had some brown spots but they were never black.”

It took every bit of professionalism I had not to cover my mouth and gag when the maggot fell from his nose and onto the blanket in front of him. He picked it up, not even bothering with the tissue and watched it squirm between his thumb and forefinger. I had to avert my eyes when he crushed it with his gnarled fingers.

“Well I guess those bastards laid eggs in my bananas. I had no idea. I thought only fruit flies did crap like that, shows what I know. This means I ate who knows how many maggot infested bananas before the symptoms started to show.

“The first thing I noticed of course was the canker sores on my tongue hurt worse than usual. I thought maybe it was the ketchup on my meatloaf causing them to flare up or the peach cobbler I had for dessert. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I had fly eggs embedded in my tongue. So I just kept eating them bananas.

“It turns out the eggs in my tongue were the least of my problems. I had swallowed so many eggs that my intestinal tract was full of them. I found out about that little gem when I started shitting maggots a few days ago.

“The doctors can kill the ones in my guts though so they are no big deal. Those weren’t even a problem. Nasty mind you, but not a problem. No the problem is that the mouth, ears and brain are all connected via the sinuses. That’s the real problem in any case.

“See from what I understand some of these fly eggs got into my sinuses and hatched or maybe the little maggot bastards crawled there, either way I got fly larvae squirming around in my brain now and it’s killing me,” he cried out and grabbed his head in pain as if to emphasize his point.

I ran to assist him, shutting off the recorder and moving the table out of his way. I used a syringe containing a double dose of Demerol which I administered directly into the blood stream through his Cephalic vein. I removed the pillow from behind his back and started to lower the bed when he grabbed my arm and waved me off.

“Mr. Partridge, please try to relax and let the painkiller do its work. We can finish this later.”

The old man propped himself back up and motioned to the recorder. I moved the table back to its former position. Once he had composed, himself I depressed the red button one more time.

“I like you Dr. Bridges. I know you have done the best you can for me, but we need to do this now. I don’t think there is going to be a later for me. Where was I?”

“You were saying the infestation has metastasized to your brain.”

“Right, the doctors think a bunch of eggs hatched in my sinuses and the maggots made their way to my inner ear and then the buggers crawled into my brain. I believe it too because I can feel them. Not so much in my brain but crawling around in my ear and back behind my eyes. I guess the ones eating my brain is what keeps giving me these headaches. Yeah, I can feel them and hear them too. In my ear munching away on me,” he started to dig in his ear as he said this like a dog after a flea. After a moment, he withdrew his finger and wiped the wax covered worm onto a fresh tissue.

“I uh… sorry. What was I saying? Oh my brain uh… they can’t kill the ones in my brain because of something I don’t really understand it’s called the blood brain barrier and I think what it means is that they can’t put drugs in my brain to kill the maggots without killing my brain or something like that. I figure what does it matter if the drugs kill me or the bugs kill me but the doctors say there is zero chance of success so they can’t be responsible.

“I understand. They can’t give me anything they know will kill me it would be like euthanizing me which I understand is still against the law. They did offer to give me some medicine to put me in a coma but since I’m not sure if I would feel pain in a coma or not I think I’ll pass. This way I can tell you if I need more medication.

“Plus maybe I can save someone else from experiencing what I am going through. The doctors all assure me that my case is so unusual they are learning from every stage of my demise. I mean no offense to you Dr. Bridges but I think some of your colleagues are just down right curious to see what is going to happen to me.”

I started to protest when he was racked by another coughing fit, this one much more severe than the others. I shoved the table out of the way not wasting time with the recorder. I helped Mr. Partridge into a seated position and grabbed a nearby bedpan. I held it under the old man’s chin while tapping his back to encourage him to clear the obstruction.

He spit a foul smelling phlegm into the pan. Most of the maggots were dead but not all of them. He reached for more tissues and I laid the box beside him on the bed. He put a fistful to his mouth and looked at me with fear in his watery eyes. Then he screamed and flung himself backward on the bed in a convulsive fit. I tried to restrain the old man from hurting himself unduly. I realize now how ridiculous that sounds.

The old man screamed and convulsed in agony until the orderlies arrived to affix the bed restraints, at which time I administered morphine in an attempt to alleviate his pain. It seemed to be working. He had stopped screaming at the top of his lungs and had resigned himself to weeping quietly with his eyes closed.

“Mr. Partridge, I’ve given you some morphine, just let that work. You just rest now.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and watched in horror as worm tears welled in the corners of his closed eyes and crawled down the sides of his face.

I reached over to turn off the tape recorder when he turned his maggot filled gaze upon me one final time. My scream was the last thing the tape recorded.


(1844 Words)