Here’s the story.

Monday was 14 days. I celebrated quietly, over a big steak.

Yesterday was 16 days. Being a card-carrying member of the .5% of the universe card, I said nothing.

Today, though, it’s 17 days with no symptoms, you know, other than that pesky daily 5AM anxiety wakeup call.

So my reasoning goes like this: if I’ve jinxed myself by mentioning the no symptoms thing, well, at the very least now I’ll have ensured my place in the annals of Anisakis history. Mmmm, annals.

Thanks everyone who particiapted in the Parasite Watch ’06. And cook your halibut right!

The pathology report came back. It’s Anisakis simplex, also known as herringworm. Really freaking easy to kill, if you COOK YOUR FOOD. Someone in the kitchen that night screwed up bigtime – according to the FDA, this is not a thing commonly found in restaurants.

The good news is, other than the worst tension headache I’ve ever had, I feel fine. My stomach is definitely upset, but unless it gets much more severe, I’ll chalk it up to stress.

The bad news is that it can take as long as two weeks for Anisakiasis (that is, the infection caused by ingestion of Anisakis) to manifest.

The other good news is, there have only been 50 cases reported in the US, pretty much ever.

But then the other bad news is it often gets totally misdiagnosed as a bunch of other awful things, so who knows how accurate any of this is. They can definitively diagnose Anisakiasis when, you know, you cough up some nematodes.

So. That’s that.

When you spend four hours in the emergency room with some worm-infested fish in a bag, everyone is your friend, and is also an amateur scientist. Everyone.

I won’t mention the name of the restaurant, because I would own its search results within two hours. It’s probably not appropriate to list here. If you really must know, ask me in person or email. I’ll be happy to tell you. It’s a nice restaurant.

The halibut was delicious. From Alaska, fresh, and apparently never frozen. Apparently never fully cooked, either. Between two lobes of flesh, about 2/3rds of the way through the filet, a wiggly pink ~1″ worm was quite comfortably nestled. Actually, later in the ER, one of my eagle-eyed junior scientist neighbors noticed that there were two, happily wriggling around the remaining piece of uneaten fish.

What a freaking night. We drove straight to the hospital, where we watched two hours of South Park, and they carried my worm off in a little dated and numbered cool-whip specimen container. So now I’ve got a date with the LA County department of public health, as well as a follow-up with my friendly neighborhood infectious disease specialist. Stunning.

The good news is, normally the symptoms for this manifest within a couple of hours. It’s all treatable, and if I actually did manage to ingest a friend of the fully living, third-larval stage parasitic nematode that I got to bring home from the restaurant, well, at least it’s tremendously rare to experience severe symptoms.

Overwhelming anxiety and a phobia of anything related to Google Image Search Results for “Pseudoterranova decipiens” do not apparently count as symptoms.

There’s humor in this. The scene I made in the restaurant was pretty good. And oh, later, at the ER? The part where the psycho looking homeless guy comes in, carrying a paper, sits down two seats away from me, and within 30 seconds, slams the paper as hard as he can, right down on the baggie containing my worm? Comedic gold.

“Uh, hey…”

“Oh, was that yours?”

I guess you had to be there.

Considering my extensive collection of bizarre biology photographs and medical clip art, it just seemed unfair to NOT share. There are seven desktop backgrounds, at 1024×768 and 1600×1200.

Freshly posted, get them while they’re still warm!

Those indeed are real bird parts, lovingly flattened and pasted down into books.