Morgellons disease is a self-diagnosed condition that involves the emergence of substances or objects from the skin. Victims of the disease experience threads, flecks, fuzz, larvae and more seeping from their skin or moving just beneath it. However, the primary struggle of these victims is not finding a cure, it is getting their doctors and families to believe them. The disease was coined in 2001 when a mother, Mary Leitao, sought a diagnosis for her child who felt as though bugs were crawling under his skin. When several doctors failed to find an issue with her son, they began to diagnose Mary with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. So, Mary created a diagnosis herself, thus Morgellons was born.
This excerpt by Leslie Jamison follows the author on her journey to Austin, Texas to be a part of the annual conference led by an advocacy organization called the Charles E. Holman Foundation. The conference welcomed victims, researchers, and healthcare providers to meet and discuss the many aspects and developments of the disease. During the visit, the author met many unique victims suffering from their own variation of Morgellons, all the while she questions the legitimacy of their ailments. A woman named Sandra suffers from wriggling larva seeping from her skin while she bathes (Jamison 50). Dawn, a nurse from Pittsburgh, was covered in the white patches that results from excessive scratching of lesions (Jamison 31). One person that the author interacted with on a deeper level was a woman named Kendra. She suspects that the fibers that she finds coming from her skin are due to Morgellons, and she hopes to get a microscope session at the conference to “see more” and finally understand what’s going on inside of her, why the “things” she tries to get out seem to be moving away from her (Jamison 36).
People are willing to put themselves through copious amounts of pain in order to relieve themselves from the psychological suffering of their contagion.Through Kendra, the author is able to deeply analyze the psychological intricacies that are involved with the disease. Kendra is walking on the edge of diagnosis. She is sick of trying to figure out her symptoms herself, being at the conference helps her feel like she’s not the only one. Otherwise she would start to think that she’s crazy again, like the doctors have been telling her. Victims like Kendra soon become trapped in a life that revolves around keeping “them” at bay, “them” being the foreign objects or creatures that reside within them. The conference gives the victims the empathy that doctors and onlookers have denied them, but it does not offer a cure. If anything, the conference provides a satisfactory disappointment in the fact that their suspicions of a lack of cure are confirmed. In addition, it offers a safe place for the disease-consumed victims to share their stories and finally be themselves.
This raises the question, does expressing empathy to victims validate the existence of Morgellons? And if so, does this validity provide freedom from the grasp of the disease or secure the victim’s’ life-long suffering? These are important questions to ask because they challenge not only the attitude with which one should approach a situation such as this, but it also brings the light a reason that doctors may be denying the disease’s existence. Perhaps rejecting the disease will in turn allow victims to move on, rather than accept their fate and continue harming themselves in an effort to find internal peace.
Works Cited
Jamison, Leslie. The Empathy Exams: Essays. Graywolf Press, 2014.