It’s this particular incident that made people say “Hey Liz, you’ve got to be telling everyone about this –  or at least start a blog so others will know!” 🙂 It’s only after some time has passed that I can look back and joke about it. The work we’ve been doing in my previous posts took place this summer. Although we are a bit farther in the clean-up process than what I’m posting about, I wanted to start from the beginning and not leave anything out from this CRAZY project!

This is the day we had our sights set on the second floor. I haven’t talked much about the second floor. It’s there, no junk, just lots and lots of raccoon poop. It looks to have 4 large bedrooms, one bathroom, and maybe a storage room. There is a nice wide stairway to get upstairs. One problem though..he made the rise on each step about half as high as normal steps. So as you walk up them, you want to step up higher but end up tripping the whole way up! So odd!

 

Of course, we jump right into cleaning. We have an old shop vac (which will never be used again once this project is over) and a large metal dustpan. We started with the steps. Shovel the poop, then vacuum the rest. It was a good system we had going.

Why was there so much poop on the top step? My idea is that were was a coon party upstairs and the ticket into the party was to poop on the top step. “Hey Rocky, this party’s hoppin’, but to get in, I need you to duke on this step!”

 

Once we got the steps done, we made our way across about half of the space. Shovel, vacuum, shovel, vacuum. When the day was done, we felt gross and sweaty.

During that evening, both Chris and I had swollen glands in our necks. We mentioned it to each other but that’s about it. Then the worst happened…Chris decided to Google “raccoon feces”. Let me tell you, DO NOT search raccoon feces on Google. The information was not good, in fact, it was deadly. Raccoons can carry a roundworm parasite called Baylisascaris Procyonis. If the raccoon is a carrier, millions of eggs are shed in the feces, which can stay viable for years. YES! YEARS! When the feces is ingested (or possibly dust from it inhaled), the eggs will hatch into larvae. When hatched, they then go on to attack the central nervous system, eyes, or brain. This can lead to blindness, meningitis, and/or death. WAIT, WHAT!?! Had we unknowingly exposed our whole family to this horrible parasite.

 

We’d all worn masks and gloves through the entire clean-up because we knew we were dealing with poop. But your mind races. Had we not taken them off properly? The CDC said we should have worn haz-mat suits and full respirators and either burned, buried, or sent the suits to the landfill. We hadn’t done that! We’d even read a statistic that of a certain number of coons tested in Illinois, 60-80% of them were carrying the Baylisascaris procyonis!

Fortunately, there have been 25 deaths from the parasite in the last 30 years. If we all got it, then we would be the ultimate statistic for it. They’d have to rename it “The Wieting Parasite”!

As I lay in bed that night, I prayed that the Lord would protect our family and that everything would turn out fine. That still didn’t stop me from feeling a sense of panic. It was a long night! I was up early and texted my doctor. He said to watch everyone and let him know if we present any symptoms. Oh boy, this momma felt helpless. The symptoms were headache, fever, nausea, and loss of motor control. WAIT, WHAT?! Loss of motor control! I paced the kitchen all morning while constantly checking my boys’ foreheads. That same day, I was also dealing with my mother, who had fallen at her home, was at the hospital, and would eventually check into a nursing home. With all that was going on, how could I not have a headache or feel nauseous!

After lunch, I called the nurse and told her that I needed to meet with the doctor to talk more about it. My doctor called back. He had talked to the Iowa Dept. of Health. They both suggested that we go to an infectious disease doctor and had set an appointment for us two days later.

With two nights with not much sleep, it was off to the doctor we went! It was like we were living a horrible nightmare. We were called back to see the doctor. When he came into our room, he looked around at us and said, “Ok, who am I seeing today?” We smiled and said, “Um, all of us.” He eased our mind a bit as he told us that this is a rare parasite.  Fortunately, there have been 25 deaths from the parasite in the last 30 years. My husband tried to make light of the situation and stated that we would be the ultimate statistic for it if we all happened to perish from it. They’d have to rename it “The Wieting Parasite”!  Needless to say, it was not so funny at the time.

The doctor laid out a plan of action for us to follow:

1. We’d all get blood work done to see if we were making antibodies to a parasite

2. If we presented any symptoms, we would be put on an anti-parasitic medication called albendazole

3. We would send in samples of feces to ISU to have them tested for the parasite

What a fun way to spend our Friday night getting blood drawn!

The blood work came back negative on all 4 of us. Thank you Lord! It eased our mind but it was still indefinite on whether the body begins making antibodies when the eggs entered the body or when the eggs hatch. We had been exposed for over a month now. We rarely did any work without masks on. But what about those few times we let our guard down?

The next day Chris went to the house to get samples of the feces to send to Iowa State University. Since we had upwards of 6 coons, we took samples from various places in the house. At this point, I wouldn’t have minded just burning the whole place down. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to set foot in that house again!

It was hard to wait for the results to come back. When they did, we gave a BIG sigh of relief. All samples were negative!! That was what I needed to hear in order to feel safe and move on.

Thankfully we can look back and laugh at this. However, it was a wake up call and lesson learned to do your homework before jumping into a project. We left it in God’s hands and prayed daily that He would bring us through this safely. As we have felt that God has had His hand on this project from the beginning, our faith kept us strong. But it was still a very trying time for our family and we’re glad to be through with it.

We feel like we are a living PSA for Baylisascaris Procyonis. The more you know, right?