Maggot Debridement Therapy aka squirmy nastiness

Maggot Debridement Therapy aka squirmy nastiness

every wednesday is the clinical conference at KCMC. this is when the doctors, nurses, students, and everyone in between get together in a big hall to have some topic presented.  often times it is quite boring, well at least for me and my complete ignorance of the nuts and bolts of surgery and medicine.  every now and then it is hilarious or frightening- like the dentist presenting a ridiculously long- so long he had to be drug from the mic- on the evils of sukari (sugar).  this included a long slide show of photos of piles of sugar, random adverts of beautiful indian women (who are "sweet"- the dentist is also indian so the pics weren't completely random, just a little random), and pictures of poor mother being forced to do outreach with some toothbrushes. then there are the presentations from departments like surgery in which you are reminded how horrible it would be if you actually got hurt- horrible b/c the methods of treatment are often quite frightening here. 

then there are the visitors, like the man from a think tank in dc who was presenting on all the new technologies being investigated that will change the world. i thought some of his was quite interesting, though when he went off on the wonders of internet bringing everyone in the world to the same page, i wanted to tell him it takes me 8 hrs to download 14mb of bbc to hear the news, when the internet works at all.

but then there was today. and the maggots. a doctor came today from the International Biotherapy Society.  he was actually quite good, much better than the zealot maggot rumors suggested.  however, he did show pictures after picture of awful wounds, infested sores, and rotting limbs.  then there were the rotting pestilent bodies covered in maggots, then the oozing clean results and finally the healed over scars. 

this actually doesn't sound as gross or amazing as it actually looked.  these maggots are crazy.  if a patient refuses amputation, they can eat straight through an infected leg, leaving only a stump at the knee. they mostly only like dead, infected tissue- the upshot is if they are eating away one wound, but the infection has spread under the skin, they will go underneath your skin continuing to eat away the nastiness, only to reappear from a different wound. EW. 

the maggots are grown in a sterile environment... i doubt that makes anyone feel better after the 12 hour period in which they quadruple their size.  when they cut open the bandage in which the drs have locked the maggots on you, they explode out all over, huge and nasty.  for the more delicate, you can have maggots by tea bag.  they put the maggots in the tea bag then lay the bag on the infection. this way you don't have the "mental trauma" of watching the maggots plus you don't have the pain caused when the maggots use their 2 little hook claws to crawl around you. but then the maggots can't use their special maggot ray to locate and follow the infection.
EW.