Stories like this are hard to read, but I think you owe it to yourself and your kids and your grandkids.

I don’t follow Icelandic politics, but I found this profile of Reykjavik’s new major hilarious. Here’s an excerpt from Major Gnarr’s acceptance speech:

No one has to be afraid of the Best Party, because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.

Notable campaign promises made by Gnarr included:

• Free towels at public swimming pools, and free pool admission for everyone under 18
• “A drug-free Parliament by 2020”
• A Disneyland at the airport
• Coalition partners must have watched all 5 seasons of “The Wire”
• A polar bear display at the zoo (rather than shooting polar bears who wind up swimming to Iceland when they can’t find any nearby ice)

I’ve been on a now years-long quest to understand and treat a kaleidoscope of health problems, with the help and guidance of (in chronological order) several docs, an acupuncturist, a talk therapist, another doc, a psychiatrist, and, at long last, a wonderful nutritionist.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been on a diet free of wheat, milk, soy, garlic, and cashews. I decided to avoid wheat and milk long-term because I had such pronounced negative reactions to them after controlled reintroductions during a six-week-long elimination diet. The soy, garlic, and cashews were just for good measure, as a blood spot IgG antibody test for the top 30 food allergens showed that I have some immune sensitivity to those foods, which is not definite proof of an allergy, but raises the likelihood of an allergy. I didn’t actually try a controlled reintroduction of soy, garlic, or cashews to check for reaction. I was feeling so much better after eliminating wheat and milk that I figured why not just steer clear of it all for good measure? Few things are as annoying to eliminate as wheat; eliminating the other guys is a (gluten-free) cakewalk after that.

My moods and energy on the new diet were good. I continued suffering from occasional bouts of weird edema and itchiness in my eyes and hands, as well as occasional unexplained rashes on my face and neck, but my nutritionist hoped those symptoms might clear up as my intestines healed from damage caused by food-triggered autoimmune reactions.

[Those of you eating or with sensitive stomachs may want to stop here and come back later. Seriously. I warned you]

Then, last week, the lab report came back from a comprehensive stool sample analysis my nutritionist ordered. A few surprises there. The big surprise was that I’ve been playing host to a family of Necator americanus, hookworms who have been chewing on my small intestines and drinking my blood. Cheers, guys! No wonder I have symptoms of intestinal damage and nutrient malabsorption! The damn worms have been eating my guts. And my food. Friggin’ expensive food. And supplements, too. Dammit.

I also have a colony of some fancy opportunistic bacteria, presumably acquired from a tainted water supply, named Achromobacter xylosoxidans. And an unidentified yeast. As well as a second (also unidentified) parasite. Also of interest, but not quite so exciting as the parasites, is additional confirmation of wheat sensitivity: an elevated IgA antibody result from my gut.

I have no clue how long I’ve had hookworms, or the other guys. I have slightly more of a clue about where I picked up the hookworms, though. Bodi’s parasite test came back clean, so he’s not to blame. Necator americanus doesn’t come from dogs, anyway. They do come from warm sandy beaches in the American southeast, though. Like from every waterway I spent time splashing around in as a kid. Or possibly from the Beaufort, NC, estuary where I spent the summer studying at the Duke University Marine Lab. Or possibly from the black-sand beaches of Guatemala where I attended the wedding of my German au pair in the mid 1990s.

To cheer myself up, I’ve been reading loads about hookworms and other intestinal parasites. I’ll spare you any graphic links, but I can now say with pride that my hookworm infection puts me in the esteemed company of Mahatma Gandhi, a third of Americans, and the vast majority of the world’s poor. I might also say that I can now compete with the black-market hookworm salesman interviewed in this fantastic This American Life episode about parasites, but that would be a lie, because I already took the albendazole prescription that I hope will wipe out my infection.

The amazing prospect the latest diagnosis raises is that the crazy quilt of vague diagnoses I’ve had over the years—immunoglobulin deficiency, asthma, keratosis pilaris, food allergies, anxiety, depression, hypomania, polycystic ovarian syndrome, low stomach acid, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut syndrome, autoimmune disorder—could have been caused by or greatly exacerbated by these parasites (hookworm et al).

The scary prospect is that, if the dude from This American Life is right, my allergies might get worse after I kill the hookworms. Oh, well. I guess I can cross that bridge (or that open-air latrine) when I come to it.