Five Years of Hell And One Very Torrid Love Affair Begin. For five long and torturous years I have dreamt of devils and stop signs and large red trucks, dying babies spewing green vomit, coiled snakes, black bodies and burning bridges fill my dreams. Even today the night terrors continue as I lay very ill and uninsured in the United States of America. I made a single bad decision five years ago, to quit my job and move to another state to be near my grown children, also giving up my health insurance, and that bad decision left me where I am now, half dead and sitting outdoors on an ex-boyfriend’s porch swing, uninsured, rotting and starving and so scared, that my teeth would chatter and my knees would wobble, like an old fashion cartoon character. I sit on this swing for 18 hours a day, waiting for doctor appointments alone, and then one sunny South West Florida day, I met Kirk. Kirk is much like a block of ice amongst the glaciers, smooth on the outside, hard bodied, cool, and hidden in the wrong spot at the right time, could sink even the strongest of ships, much like the iceberg that took down the Titanic. He’s a storm all right, and my not heeding the warning signals of my gut on getting involved with Kirk start yet another stretch of terrifying events. I’ve known Kirk for about three months, yet strangely I am not even sure what he looks like. In the commotion of erratic chaos he’s a blur. I do know he is largely endowed, because he would rub up against me sometimes while I was making garlic patches in my ex boyfriends kitchen, the patches consisted of raw chopped garlic smothered on top of tin foil, and I would tape these patches to my back in a desperate attempt to stop a tapeworm from eating my back muscle. Kirk took a liking to me I guess. He would come sit on the swing with me for hours, most of the time he would be in a drunken stupor, he prayed with me every day and he liked to sing Hallelujah in a slow melancholy way. “I can summon the Holy Spirit in an instant,” he would say. He tells me about a train wreck that took his sisters life, and how he watched her beheaded, then he sings Hallelujah some more, huge tears splashing from his eyes. There’s a stench of alcohol on his breath, and a wretched look of horror on his face, as well as some kind of strange glow to him. I was losing grip, slipping away into the darkness, face to face with life’s biggest and final demon, the demon of death. Very, very ill sitting in the hot Florida sun for hours on end, my once perfect creamy white skin had become dry and burnt, raw and shriveled, my once bright blue eyes had now become gray and tired, half open, lifeless. I was in a state of shock, overwhelmed, ignored and dying of a severe strain of food poisoning. I was salivating wildly, spitting huge blobs of mucus on the dirt beneath my feet on the swing and chain smoking Pall Mall cigarettes. Kirk arrives and shows me how to order my own medications online from another country, and he offers to pay for the meds with his credit card that’s declined. I am happy for the help regardless and hopeful that with Kirks help I might survive this illness. He tells me I am pretty and tries to look up my skirt, I get offended and run to a neighbor’s house a block away in my jammies and ask her if I can stay the night with her and she lets me. This same scenario goes on and on night after night with Kirk, only I don’t run to the neighbors anymore, now I hide in my room. I am devising a plan to get this infection out of my body. I need someone just a little crazy and filled with faith and Kirk is the one. Kirk is lurking outside my window in the thorny brush drunk and telling me lies, devising his own plan to sleep with me. After several days I allow Kirk into my room. I discuss my plan with him to get a parasite out of my body that spawned from the awful food poisoning. Kirk agrees to help. He tells me he needs to get some kind of magic flower that will help with any infection. He calls his Mexican friend who once had a mysterious infection in his leg and the doctors were going to cut off his friend’s leg, “boil the flower” says the Mexican friend, “pour the flowers juice on the part of your body that’s infected, and you will be healed!” Kirk and I drive feverously to the Mexicans home, Kirk is driving 60 MPH on a 35 MPH street and I am puking out the car window and choking on huge blobs of mucus as we arrive at the Mexicans home and retrieve the magic flower. Back at home Kirk makes a potion lotion out of the flower , he boils the flower with Crisco oil and slathers some on my belly and back, and then Kirk drinks the rest. I fight Kirk off me most the night and the noise wakes up my ex-boyfriend that owns the home I am staying at, and this angers my ex so much that in the morning Kirk is banned from the house and I am told to start looking for a new place to live. I tell Kirk that the flower potion did nothing for my illness and I discuss a new plan with him to cut the parasite out. I show Kirk many U tube clips on how this is done and arrange to meet him in secret later that night. I buy an Exacto knife and some peroxide and meet Kirk in the park around 5:00, we sit in his beat up white work van and Kirk inspects the razor. A police car enters the park and circles around and then leaves, Kirk is unfazed by the strange presence of the police car and tells me to lift up my shirt, I do, and he takes the razor and slices me across the rib cage. It bleeds only a little, but hurts a lot, and the cut is not nearly deep enough to squeeze a parasite out of and I am faint and in shock and pain, somehow watching the U tube clips on worm self extraction I missed that it would be painful, We decide to try the worm extraction another day. Back at my ex-boyfriend’s house I sit on my swing alone again, all my belongings are in my car, I had packed up my belongings early in the morning as instructed by my ex. I drive around the small town and find a silly little pink, shack apartment for $700 a month, and I move into the apartment the next day. I drive over to Kirks home and try to discuss with him the next attempt to extract the worm. Kirk has put together a new cut kit and I am impressed. He has purchased a new razor and some gauze and some red wine. On Kirks back lanai I lift up my dress and tuck it between my breasts and Kirk makes a trial cut on my side to test the razors sharpness. Kirk slashes me with the razor across my side and a dark red blob of blood drizzles down my skin, his hands are all over me, fondling me and I can’t focus, an overwhelming desire to run takes over me and I hop in my car and drive back to my silly little pink apartment. The next night I drive back over to Kirks to try the worm extraction again. I can feel the worm slithering around in my belly and eating pathways through my fat. Tapeworms move throughout the entire body, they do not just stay inside the colon. I am wearing a pale green strapless dress and very little make up, feeling confident today that Kirk and I can cut a deep enough hole in my belly fat to squeeze the worm through. But when I arrive at Kirks he is already drunk, I had asked him to stay sober for the cut, but he did not listen. I get the cut kit ready and Kirks hands are all over my body again, he is caressing my hips and thighs and once again I cannot concentrate. We end up making love on his queen size bed several times instead of doing the cut. After the love making I am hot with anger and screaming. I realize Kirk is not really concerned with my health, he just want’s sex. I hop in my car and once again drive home to my silly apartment. I scream at Kirk over the phone and he offers to pay for a doctor appointment for me in the morning. In the daylight Kirk gives me his credit card and I take a jar of brown, smelly, mucusy spit to the walk in clinic. The doctor tells me he doesn’t know of any test for parasites through saliva, instead he orders a blood test for blood parasites, I go to the lab where they take 4 vials of blood, however I know the parasites are not in my blood, they’re in my body fat and back muscle! I can feel the parasites slithering inside me unrelentlessly.