It’s that time of year. Lots of rain, lots of work. And just when you can least afford it, you notice you aren’t feeling that great. Sometimes nothing can defend against the kid sneezing behind you in lecture or the sick sweaty guy on the other IM team. It definitely wasn’t that cup you shared at that party. Alcohol’s a disinfectant, right?

However you became ill, I’m here to tell you not to worry. Yes, your midterms will probably suffer, and your love life might take another hit. But things could be worse. Trust me. Your cold is nothing compared to the worms I once had in my arm.

If you are easily disgusted you should probably stop here. Gautama Siddharta, the founder of modern Buddhism, once said, “Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” If this is true, then I am a terrible writer (in multiple ways) — or at least I have a sick sense of humor.

But here we go. After two summers in Africa, these are some of my sickest moments:

1. Mango Worms: The mango fly sounds harmless. But its parasitic breeding led to one of the defining moments of my 2006 summer in Uganda. One day, after about a week of putting antibiotic cream on what I thought was an infected mosquito bite, I broke the cardinal rule of bug bites: I squeezed it as hard as I could. This is one of the few cases, however, where a rash decision turned out well for me. With few hard pinches, I was able to force out a white lump from the small hole in the bite on my forearm.

Then it moved.

After peeling myself off the ceiling, I put the maggoty creature on a piece of paper and carried it downstairs to show my Ugandan friends. At first, they were baffled, but I eventually learned that mango flies lay eggs on pretty much anything near a mango tree. If you leave your clothes outside to dry, you have to iron them to kill the heat seeking larvae the mango flies could have left behind. Turns out, though, that Ugandans have developed immunity, and only hapless non-Africans like me tend to get infected. As the worms grow, they take bigger and bigger bites of the inside of your arm (or wherever you’re infested) before breaking through your skin to take flight. Luckily, I caught the worm early and only lost a little flesh before I got the sucker out. The removal was gross, and a bit painful, but my arm felt a whole lot better after it was gone.

2. Cholera: Did you know cholera still exists? Before I got it in Ghana last summer, I hadn’t heard much about the disease since I stopped playing The Oregon Trail. My mom still doesn’t believe that I actually had it, but trust me, you know when you do. Basically, your body expels water faster than you can drink it, and the process isn’t pretty — you can probably guess the method of expulsion. Without rehydration treatments, rapid loss of water and electrolytes can be deadly, especially for the young. Luckily for me, a Canadian friend in my hostel had a can of condensed Gatorade powder, and after about 24 hours and lots of Gatorade, I survived. My esteem for Canadians had never been higher. The lesson? Wash your hands more.

3. Strep Throat: Not exotic, you say? Perhaps, but I’m including it in my list anyway. I was traveling in a small town in Ghana when suddenly I came down with a raging fever. I was terrified. In Ghana, the words fever and malaria are used synonymously, and malaria isn’t something you can squeeze out of your arm. After fighting the fever for a few days, I finally went to a clinic in the capital city of Accra. The doctor looked at my throat, told me I clearly didn’t have malaria, and scolded me for not seeing a doctor sooner. Overprescribed or not, I sure was grateful for antibiotics.

4. Stomach Amoeba: As my friends at the Haas center will tell everyone they send abroad this year, one of the main things you have to watch in any developing country is the food. Back in Uganda, I ate at my office’s low budget employee cafeteria for most of the summer — I made friends at lunch, ate healthy, lost weight. But one day my stomach hurt more than usual. A very nice Swedish doctor found I had a stomach parasite (after analyzing my stool sample), and gave me medication to kill it. Glamorous, I know.

If you’ve made it this far and still don’t feel better, you may need medicine instead of relativism. But hey, I did what I could. Now go wash your hands.

Michael swears that he has completely recovered from everything and is not contagious. Send your best exotic disease stories to mjwilkerson@gmail.com.