Pete Dixon

About 10 days ago I was called away out of my city on a family emergency. I had to leave on a Sunday, just before the courier with my hookworms were to arrive. I was frantic because were they to be sent back or lost I might not be able to get more until the spring as larvae often are killed in the cold weather. If that happened, I would soon have to go gluten-free and would experience colitis for months till I could reorder when the weather warmed.

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The package was sent internationally but I learned it was carried after the border by Canada Post. I received on Tuesday by first email of a delivery attempt. From my parent's home I called my local post office and discovered that they could hold my package for two weeks before it was sent back. Luckily I got back in 8 days and was able to collect it. If things had turned out differently I might not have gotten back to my city for a month and the larvae would have been lost to me.

Yesterday morning I applied them. I was still distracted so I messed up a bit. The idea is always to take the larvae vial and pour it on the gauze, then use the pipette to use the included saline to rinse the larvae vial to collect any stragglers. I just used the pipette to collect the saline and squirt it on the gauze, so I missed any in the larvae vial. Oh well. I had ordered 25 larvae, more than enough, so if I lost a few it's likely not a big deal.

I left the gauze on my arm for 6 hours and then applied the steroid cream. As usual I had felt the tingling as they buried through the skin. Not painful. Like a tickle if anything. Today the entry site was periodically itchy, something I felt like rubbing every hour or so. No big deal. It's starting to get red now and will probably hit maximum ugliness in 2–3 days before it starts healing.

Aside from cost, the delivery drama of getting larvae gets old. Larvae can be delayed or intercepted by customs. Providers generally resend shipments, but the delay has a real effect if you are following an inoculation schedule. I once went an entire winter gluten-free because a delayed shipment (43 days) caused the larvae to be exposed to cold weather killing them.

Hopefully with my plan to self-supply going forward these delivery concerns are over.