I Only Have Flies For You

Photo Credit: Jim Champion

In my humble, germophobic opinion, there is nothing more disgusting than the common house fly. I hate lots of other insects, such as mosquitoes or ants, but flies clearly bug me the most. Flies are dirty and slick.

A medical office is supposed to be clean...sanitary. Clinics are not supposed to have visible dirt, contamination, or flies. Medical offices did rank very high on my Blog series of the Dirty Dozen - The Twelve Dirtiest Places. Sure, an occasional, misguided fly might get sucked through the automatic clinic doors from time to time, but last week, our medical office had a Biblical plague of flies. They were everywhere. We had them on the ceiling, buzzing around our heads, getting trapped in light fixtures, and landing on every surface. The more we killed; the more flies that appeared. The staff was going crazy by cleaning everything. Patients were commenting. One even said this was like a Third World Country. This is not something you want to hear.

I did some medical volunteer work in Jamaica several years ago, working in a remote clinic. In the morning, we had chickens walking through. By the afternoon, the chickens were mysteriously gone. That evening, we were served jerked chicken. This WAS a third world country, and I did not notice any flies in that clinic, even though there were no screens (or glass) in the windows.

Our office sees many newborns and new parents are VERY conscientious about cleanliness. If a bottle touches a surface, they wash it. If a pacifier drops on the floor, parents will not use it until it can be sanitized again. They will take a new one out of a plastic bag. When I am seeing newborns, I scrub my hands over and over in front of the parents. I wash off my stethoscope with an alcohol swab. However, when you are examining a baby, you don't want a fly landing on them. Of course, several months from now, those same, carefully-protecting children will be crawling around eating flies. But, that is another story.

We all have our own little secret "skills". I am proud to say that I can consistently catch a fly in the air or on a surface with one quick sweep of my stealthy hand. I would then wash them down the sink drain as I washed and alcohol-sanitized my hands yet again. I do find the "catch and drown" method preferable to squashing a fly on the examining table in front of horrified parents, but there is really no good, acceptable and/or sanitary way to euthanize a fly in a medical office. I did modify my fly-catching technique by making a pocket using a paper towel in my cupped hand. I could still catch the fly, wad it up in the paper, throw it in the trash, and go on with my medical business.

Exterminators were called. They traced the problem to cracks or flaws in the outside of our building. Apparently rats crawl through these areas, die, and those rat carcasses attract the flies. The flies lay eggs and, of course, these eggs hatch out and our clinic is transformed into a garbage dump overnight. So, now we have rats, too. And, rat carcasses. Can it get any better? All I need now is for a rat to lazily walk by when I doing a surgical procedure, or hear a child saying, "Look, Mommy...a mouse!"

The exterminators wanted to fog the entire clinic with toxic gas and infuse all of the nooks and crannies with various poisons. Obviously, we could not allow this to happen, so we had to be creative. We left the rats up to the exterminators to catch, but the flies were left to us. They had no other non-toxic alternatives, but to suggest fly paper. Can you believe it? Would you go to a medical clinic that had a strip of dead fly-laden sticky paper hanging in the corner? I would not permit them in my exam rooms.

Another doctor brought in a low-tech method - a fly swatter. This was an effective method as long as you can stand on a chair to get the ceiling flies. Since most of our chairs have wheels, this became a disaster waiting to happen. The commercial bug zappers were out. It would be very distracting to hear and smell a fly being electrocuted during a medical encounter. Biological methods were not an option. Toads, frogs, and lizards eat flies but those creatures also lack a certain amount of appeal. The clinic in Jamaica had lots of lizards.

This was a fly emergency and it was every provider for them selves. I came in early, disposed of every one of the flies in my exam rooms to the point where the flies recognized and feared me. I then instructed my medical assistant to sanitize those rooms from top to bottom. The doors were kept closed all day, except when patients entered or exited. We remained at Fly-Con 4 for the rest of the week, and eventually, all of the flies were gone.

Photo Credit: nicolaitan

This morning, while sitting at my desk, contemplating my victory, thinking I was now the Lord of the Flies, I was bitten on the neck - by a mosquito.

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