Day 21

Still have this cough, the sort that often follows a cold. The cough, or throatiness, is mild. There are no other symptoms, and its arrival was not in fact preceded by a cold. No gastric symptoms whatsoever. I am currently on holiday and have relaxed my diet a little to include a little milk, some peanuts and am feeling the effects of that. Too early to expect any improvement there. I'll get back in some weeks if there's any news.

Days 8-12

Day 8 I started a slight cough. Day 9 on lying down I had wheezing around my upper airway. I still have a husky voice, little bit of phlegm and slight cough. None of this is very bad at all but I wondered if it might be some kind of trachea/throat reaction to the passage of helminths? Apart from that, nothing to record.

Day 6

Nothing to report. Helminths will have migrated to intestine by now. Next event is their attachment to intestinal wall around day 21. I'll probably be back then if nothing to report in the meanwhile.

Day 1

Five hookworm last night. Slight itch soon after. Very, very mild infrequent itch today. Nothing else to report.

Background

Most of my conscious life I've been tired with poor concentration. As I grew older symptoms multiplied to include the following, all of them annoying to say the least: brain fag, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, migraine, sinusitis, sleep problems, rhinitis, muscle ache, muscle twitching especially in legs, pains randomly in various parts of the body, clumsiness (for example, biting tongue), psoriasis (from young adulthood).

Things came to a head in my mid-to-late twenties when I found myself unable to work. Various inconclusive investigations later I got a diagnosis of post-viral syndrome, also described on my case notes as neurasthenia, an old-fashioned term that seems synonymous with ME/CFS.

Unfortunately, the only advice I received was to rest and wait indefinitely for some improvement.

Around this time I was told by a herbalist that I might have food allergies. After this idea had germinated I read around the subject and found, through elimination diets, that I was allergic to many things to varying degrees. If I went on a very strict diet of cooked meat and just a couple of vegetables I felt very clear-headed and otherwise symptom-free.

In the long interim I've found out more things that help - treatments and supplements - and am hoping that helminth therapy will help further.

One measure of how I'm doing at any time is my psoriasis. It's like an instrument reading on my left elbow and right calf. I intend to add some pictures to show any improvement across time. (It looks bad but it is actually the least troublesome of my symptoms.)

Later today I am going to infect with five hookworm.