Brit woman with odd symptoms had an 8cm worm wriggling in her brain for months
A woman discovered she had a live worm wriggling around in her brain for months after complaining of headaches.
The 8cm parasite, normally found in Australian carpet pythons, was removed during surgery in a world first. The English woman had been experiencing a range of symptoms since January 2021 including diarrhoea, night sweats, cough, abdominal pain and headaches.
Her condition continued to worsen and in 2022 she was suffering from depression and forgetfulness. The 64-year-old was taken to Canberra Hospital where a brain MRI revealed an 8cm motile helminth, a parasitic roundworm, living within a lesion in her right frontal lobe.
Doctors had no choice but to operate in a case that is unprecedented in medical history, detailed in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Experts speculate that the woman inadvertently consumed the worm's eggs by consuming contaminated edible grasses.
A brain MRI revealed the parasite was living in her brain (THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSI)After hatching, the larvae made an unprecedented journey to her brain, possibly facilitated by her compromised immune system due to medication. Originally, doctors struggled to diagnose her and put her symptoms down to pneumonia and steroids.
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But further tests were inconclusive until the brain scan in January 2022 - a whole year after she first started getting symptoms. The discovery marks the first known case of a snake-exclusive parasite infecting a human, shedding light on a previously unrecorded phenomenon.
Elsewhere in the US, a Kansas woman endured an arachnophobe's worst nightmare when a venomous spider crawled inside her ear whilst she was fast asleep. When Susie Torres took herself to the doctors after hearing a "swishing sound" that wouldn't budge, it was then revealed that a brown recluse spider was in fact living inside her ear.
The venomous spider is so called due to their tendency to tuck themselves into small spaces. According to Livescience, Ms Torres told KSHB-TV in Kansas City what happened when a nurse peered inside her ear.
She explained: "She ran out and said, 'I'm going to get a couple more people'. She then said, 'I think you have an insect in there.'" It is likely that the spider snuck into Ms Torres' ear while she was asleep and thankfully, she was not bitten by the venomous creature.
Once the brown recluse was removed from her ear, Ms Torres was fine — but she won't be taking any chances from now on, she said. Ever since the incident, she has been sleeping with cotton balls in her ears to avoid another mishap. Ms Torres, who was understandably shaken up by the incident, explained: "I'm pretty terrified of spiders."
While its bite isn't fatal, the brown recluse can cause severe tissue damage, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Its venom contains a toxin that can kill the skin, sometimes leaving an open wound as large as a human hand.
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