Howie Mandel, celebrated comic and AGT judge, had a terrible experience with an insect as a kid. Lots of people find bugs very creepy and unsettling. However, he probably dislikes them more than most, evidently. There is a very, very good reason. As a youngster, Mandel had a traumatic run-in with a sand fly. It apparently laid larvae beneath the comic's skin. Mandel, 70, revisited the dismaying incident when he was a guest on In Depth With Graham Bensinger. He likened the experience to "a horror film" because he could actually see them moving. Then what allegedly took place next seemingly made everything even worse.
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Doctors Allegedly Put Mandel on Display at a Dermatology Convention
As Howie Mandel added, doctors allegedly found his situation so interesting that they showed him off at a Toronto dermatology convention! He was a child of only 6 or 7 at the time. Mandel says that he was placed on a table clad in his underwear, with nurses allegedly pinning him down. They put liquid nitrogen on the bumps under his skin. That made them "sizzle and bubble."
Mandel's memories of those awful moments are still vivid to this day. He shared with Graham Bensinger, "I was screaming....And then my mom, who didn't know what they were going to do, took me, unstrapped me from the table and said, 'You're animals. Don't do this.' And carried me out."
That whole unfortunate sand fly mess undoubtedly ramped up his "ick factor." It may also have contributed to some degree to Mandel's present-day fear of germs and his OCD. He acknowledged, "It's traumatizing. I had things living under my skin. So I have like an ick factor."
One Authority Says That Childhood Health Traumas Can Last Into Adulthood
What happened to Howie Mandel is horrific. Having a bug lay larvae under someone's skin is probably rather rare. But the allegedly unfeeling way he claims he was treated by doctors regrettably occurs more often. One expert, Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, launched Clinicians Who Care to counter that. Per USA Today, it's a database that "connect[s] patients with empathetic doctors."
Curry-Winchell states, "Those memories... that spills over into your overall physical and mental health and can play a role into what disease you develop later on."
