April 10 — What sounds like science fiction was all too real for Dawn Becerra, who found a parasitic worm lodged in her brain after eating a pork taco while vacationing in Mexico.
Doctors at Arizona's Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale believe the taco contained Taenia solium, a parasite that is surprisingly common in Latin American countries, and is often transmitted by eating undercooked pork.
Becerra said the snack made her ill for three weeks. And soon after, she began suffering seizures.
"I was tired and sick so it made it more difficult," she said. "I knew that this wasn't the way I wanted to live the rest of my life, with seizures."
She found that anti-seizure medication did not help her, and her condition worsened.
A Worm Inside Her Brain
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic discovered Becerra had neurocysticercosis — a lesion in her brain, caused by the parasitic worm.
Last November, she was told that if she wanted to live a normal, seizure-free life, she would need surgery.
As an egg, the worm attached itself to the intestinal wall, and eventually moved into her blood stream and to her brain, said Dr. Joseph Sirven, who operated on Becerra.
Once in the brain, the worm causes little harm until it eventually dies and decays, thereby inflaming surrounding tissue.
"It's after the worm dies that the body reacts to something foreign," Sirven explained.
"The thought of a worm being in your brain is very strange, very difficult to deal with," she said. But the thought of brain surgery wasn't easy to deal with, either.
"All of a sudden, I realized they were going to cut open my brain, and take a worm out of my brain" she said.
"That realization was devastating."
Want to learn more?
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/brainworm010410.html
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"I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask, is not an alien force ALREADY among us?" - Ronald Reagan
"...is there anyway that I could get some sort of higher limit for my box?" - KNS
Doctors at Arizona's Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale believe the taco contained Taenia solium, a parasite that is surprisingly common in Latin American countries, and is often transmitted by eating undercooked pork.
Becerra said the snack made her ill for three weeks. And soon after, she began suffering seizures.
"I was tired and sick so it made it more difficult," she said. "I knew that this wasn't the way I wanted to live the rest of my life, with seizures."
She found that anti-seizure medication did not help her, and her condition worsened.
A Worm Inside Her Brain
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic discovered Becerra had neurocysticercosis — a lesion in her brain, caused by the parasitic worm.
Last November, she was told that if she wanted to live a normal, seizure-free life, she would need surgery.
As an egg, the worm attached itself to the intestinal wall, and eventually moved into her blood stream and to her brain, said Dr. Joseph Sirven, who operated on Becerra.
Once in the brain, the worm causes little harm until it eventually dies and decays, thereby inflaming surrounding tissue.
"It's after the worm dies that the body reacts to something foreign," Sirven explained.
"The thought of a worm being in your brain is very strange, very difficult to deal with," she said. But the thought of brain surgery wasn't easy to deal with, either.
"All of a sudden, I realized they were going to cut open my brain, and take a worm out of my brain" she said.
"That realization was devastating."
Want to learn more?
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/brainworm010410.html
------------------
"I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask, is not an alien force ALREADY among us?" - Ronald Reagan
"...is there anyway that I could get some sort of higher limit for my box?" - KNS
