I have decided to write an article on my experience with Leishmania or Papalomoya. One reason is that both warring sides in Palestine are having a problem with this parasite. The information in my article can help to reduce some suffering.
In January 2023, I started to have pain in my left shin just above my ankle. At first, I thought that I must have bumped it on something because it felt like I had been hit on the shin with a stick, and there was no visible wound or skin discoloration. However, at the time, I was also beginning to experience a pain that ran from my heel to my buttocks. I thought this was because I was working standing a lot and did not make any connection to my seemingly bruised shin.
However, the pain did not go away; it slowly worsened over four months and eventually began to show a small sore that seemed to come from beneath the skin. It grew larger and started to become more painful. At this stage, I got an appointment with a skin specialist (Dermatologist) in San Jose who was extremely helpful and professional. At first, she treated me for vasculitis, and I took some medicine and treated the wound for the next few weeks.
But when I went for my second appointment a month later, there were two wounds; a second one had started, and I didn’t know if it was spreading or if it was the same as the first one because it was a different shape. I was getting worried.
At this stage, the doctor said that she thought her initial diagnosis was incorrect, and she suspected Leishmania. I had heard of Papalomoya as a friend had had an experience with it. Then she told me that Papalomoya is the Spanish name for Leishmania. This was a revelation to me. I didn’t know it was the same thing. It was a parasite.
I immediately took a dose of Ivermectin because it targets many parasites, and I read information that said it would help. I also cut out all sugar and fruit from my diet. However, I didn’t notice any difference.
She sent me to the hospital for PCR tests. They tested the wound, but the wound was not at all wet, so they struggled to get a drop of moisture from the wound. But they said it was enough and processed the test. It came back negative for Leishmania.
I have done a heap of research online, and I am certain it is Leishmania. So, I requested another test. The same thing happened, and the test was returned with ” Leishmania was not found.”
I still dispute the hospital tests and do not have much faith in PCR tests. I was going to treat it as Leishmania because everything I have seen online says that I have it.
By now, the pain was unbearable; I had been living with this for eight months now. I could not put any pressure on my heel and could no longer sit on my bottom. It was so painful with my whole synaptic nerve from my heel to my buttocks in pain, so much so that it was difficult to find a painless position to sleep.
None of the medicines I had tried were working. It was just getting worse by the day. The doctor told me that there was a treatment, but it was not available in the private sector (I was at a private hospital) but that I could get treatment at a government hospital. I investigated the treatment; It was a horrific series of injections with all sorts of questions. I would have to have this medicine injected directly into the wound site twice a week for a month. That sounded like something I was not going to be doing.
I was getting desperate.
Then, I was attending a Ceremony, and one of the participants (who had a good background in understanding plant medicines) in the ceremony suggested that I try to use tobacco. I did some investigating with some friends of mine who live in the Amazon, and they told me that I should put Rapé(traditional Tobacco snuff) into the wounds and wrap the wounds with tobacco leaf once a day for 30-60min.
So, I prepared some paste with Yawanawa Tsunu Rapé, which is about 80% pure ground tobacco and 20% tree ash. I did not have any tobacco leaf available, so I wrapped the wound with the tobacco paste packed into the wound with a bandage.
For the first minute, it all seemed ok, but then it started to burn like hell. It was so painful that I could only keep it on for 20 minutes before I washed it off with water. It was intense. But I continued to do this once a day for the next seven days and built up the time each day. On the second day, I was able to do an hour, and on the last two days, I kept it on the whole day.
I killed the Papalomoya with tobacco. It was not easy, and it was excruciating, but every time I put it on, I just reminded myself that the next option was to go to the hospital for the poisonous injections into the wound. That helped me deal with the pain. During the experience, I felt the tobacco was fighting the parasite.
So, as someone who has been through the experience of having Leishmaniasis for over a year and not knowing what to do about it. Try tobacco. Any tobacco, either snuff or ground-dried tobacco mixed into a paste, will work. I don’t know anyone else who has done this, so I cannot verify that tobacco heals this parasite. But I am 100% sure that it healed mine.
The synaptic nerve pain went away by the end of the week’s treatment with tobacco, and I was able to sleep peacefully all night without pain for the past year. I love tobacco and the many healing attributes it has for humans.
Another observation is that I was unsure whether the synaptic nerve pain was related. However, this pain stopped immediately in the week of the tobacco application, so I am now positive that the two were related entirely.
Nixiwaka Jan 2024
