Nampa resident Rebecca Hewitt doesn't like talking about it because she usually starts crying when she does.

"These is a real issue and people are being hurt by this and it is not fair,"she told Idaho 2 News. Rebecca is suffering from what she describes as a parasite afflicting her body that very few others believes exists. "It pretty much lets you know who are your friends and who aren't your friends. Because I tell you what, there were people out there who stood by me through this. And you start feeling so low on yourself and you are almost convinced you are sick in the head."

Rebecca's hair started falling out in patches. Her joints started swelling. She started getting lesions on her skin. "I was breaking out in boils." But perhaps the most unnerving part -- mysterious particles she calls parasites with fiber -like filaments started appearing creating stinging and crawling sensations underneath her skin. "It is like a cottony fiber on your skin. It is really hard to explain. You get scared. You are afraid that it is going to take your life."

So Rebecca went to nine different doctors for help. Most of them diagnosed her as delusional. "So then you have this whole issue of 'don't tell anyone', you know. It is very emotional and it is a very mental disease because no one will listen to you."

But it is not just people in the Treasure Valley who are complaining about this thing. In the eastern Idaho rural farming community of Preston, we found another individual who claims to be afflicted by the same parasite.

"It all sounds crazy and it is crazy," says 44-year-old Daryl Crockett, a carpenter who says he is unable to work because of chronic fatigue and other neurological symptoms. He says he suffers from similar lesions on his body and swelling in his lower legs and joints. "They are just full of parasites."

He showed us numerous tiny specks on his skin. The specks are hard to see until you zoom in. Crockett  believes they  are a form of parasite associated with his symptoms. Crockett showed us a  vial full of what he believes are the parasites infecting his body. "This is just a fraction of them. I could have brought a whole jug full."

A closer a look at what is inside the vial reveals what Crockett believes are parasites that he is convinced are making him sick. Because Crockett collected them on his own and not in a laboratory environment, it is impossible to know precisely what they are. 

But Mary Leitao believes she knows what Daryl and Rebecca and hundreds of others around the country are complaining about.  "We really don't know the true numbers. What we do know is that currently 729 people have reported these symptoms to us." Leitao is the executive director of the Morgellons Research Foundation headquartered in Pittsburgh. A biologist with a background in medical research, Leitao began investigating when her three-year-old son came down with the same symptoms as Daryl and Rebecca. "He was so insistent that there were bugs in his skin that I assumed he may have contracted scabies."

She treated him with the recommended cream for scabies. That is when she says organisms visible to the naked eye started coming out. "And when I put him to bed I looked at them under the microscope. I was confused at first because what I saw were not scabies. They were fibers, bundles of fibers. I guess you could describe them as fuzz balls."

The medical community is skeptical of Leitao's claims arguing that most of her so called evidence is anecdotal. There is also no "peer-reviewed" science yet to back up her assertions that these microscopic particles are in fact parasites. Even Leitao admits, "we saw no evidence in these specific samples of actual parasites that a lay-person might assume to be a parasite like a worm or a nematode. The organisms are more fungus like but highly unusual." Leitao says the medical community is skeptical because of something called the matchbox syndrome.  "And that means any time somebody takes something in - - and in the old days it was in a match box - - to their physician and when they claimed that this came out of their skin, automatically that gives them a diagnosis of delusional parasitosis."

But Leitao has found a former noted NASA physician and epidemiologist who believes these people are not only telling the truth but maybe on the fore front of a startling new medical discovery. That part of the story tomorrow.

Creating public awareness and outrage changing the law's meada Attention contacting Senators beating on doors anything you can do to stop Doctors from the practice of linking a Mental illness with a real Physical illness" {Delusional parasitosis}---ant