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Well. Here’s something you didn’t even know you needed to be terrified of.
A healthy, 25-year-old Christian minister went to an Oakland, Calif., emergency room in September 2008, complaining of something in his eye, reports a case study in this month’s issue of The Annals of Emergency Medicine. An eyelash, maybe? A pesky speck of dust, perhaps? Or, ew, maybe a stray contact lens had wedged its way somewhere in there?
It’s just so much worse. Israel Orellana’s discomfort was caused by something called an African eye worm. That’s a worm. In his EYEBALL.
It’s an infection called loaiasis, a skin and eye disease caused by the loa loa, a parasitic worm endemic to West and Central Africa. (Side note: Do not do an image search for “loaiasis.” Seriously. Do not click here.)
In 2006, Orellana had spent 12 days in Equatorial Guinea in Central Africa, where he was preaching and helping out some missionary friends. Sometime while he was there, he had apparently been bitten by a deer fly, which is how the disease is transmitted to humans: The fly’s bite deposited larvae into his bloodstream, and those larvae grew into worms that crawled through his skin and into his eye.
The worms grew, traveling unnoticed throughout his bloodstream for almost two years, until one Sunday morning at church. “I started feeling like there was something in my eyeball, like there was a piece of dust in my eye,” says Orellana, who’s now 27 and lives with his wife in Oakland, Calif. Twelve hours later, it was still bothering him, and he and his wife studied the convex squiggle on the white of his eye in their bathroom mirror.
“In the white part of the eye there was an “s”-looking swivel,” says Orellana. He remembers his wife saying it looked like a worm, but neither one of them could believe something that horrifying until doctors confirmed their suspicions in the emergency room that night. “It was very small; you saw something like an ‘s’ moving around. It was pretty freaky.”
Not to be confused with river blindness, or onchocerciasis, loaiasis doesn’t damage vision. But when the creepy crawler moves across the eye, it can be irritating, even painful. “It can affect vision mainly because of local irritation; in general, the worm itself will usually migrate out of the eye eventually … unless you get repeat, repeat infections,” says Dr. Shannon Moffett, an emergency medicine doctor at Alameda County Medical Hospital in Oakland, Calif., who treated Orellana. Worst-case scenarios include damage to the brain, heart or kidneys.
An estimated 12 to 13 million people, mostly in West and Central Africa, are infected with the African eye worm; about 10 cases per year pop up in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
After Orellana arrived in the ER, he was treated with an oral medication called diethylcarbamazine, which kills the worms. Lucky for him, within just a few days, it worked.
Your turn, readers: What's the weirdest medical condition you've had? Tell us in the comments.
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I had this when I was about 10 years old....if it wasn't this, then a close cousin.
My mother never believed me and so I dealt with the irritation in my eye for close to a year.
I made her look and she claimed to have seen "something" but never anything enough to bring me in to a doctor. I guess the fact that I could still see fine was reason for her to not panic.
I'd spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror watching it move around my eye.
It eventually went away but still one of the wierdest things I've experienced.
Look how much good the Catholic church did for the Inca and Aztec indians in South America a few hundred years ago. Leave these people alone and let them live and worship as they always have. Every religion mistakenly thinks that theirs is the only one that will get anyone to heaven.
I had a hole in my skull that was leaking brain fluids into my inner ear. I fought with ear infections for about 4-5 months with a doctor who actually put a tube in my ear to drain it without figuring out where the fluid was coming from. I finally found a new doctor that knew what he was talking about. I was in the hospital within 2 days having skull surgery to repair the hole before the infections I was getting were able to migrate into my brain and kill me. Scary stuff after this was all corrected. I could have died before the first doctor figured out there was something more serious happening. Worst part was he sent me a letter about 3 months later because he was upset I went to another doctor.
I completely agree that it is slightly arrogant to go to another country for the sole purpose of spreading your religion. But my original point was that it is slightly extreme to say that is was well deserved for him to contract such a parasite as punishment for his actions. Look inside yourself and if you can honestly say that you are without wrong then you may judge. We all do things that others disagree with, that doesnt me we deserve harm.
blah, blah, blah, "Christians are evil", "atheists are evil"; more of the usual crap. All I know is; a worm that
lives in your eyes, awesome. May I recommend the book Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, perhaps the best book
on the subject, and so much less lame way to spend your time then trashing other peoples beliefs on the
internet.
When I was 10 years old, a school art project required us to use super glue to put together the parts. Somehow the glue got on my shirt sleeve and as I went to wipe my sweat the glue got in my eye. For about a week I could only see with one eye, and then after that I was seeing yellow for another few weeks before it went away.
blah, blah, blah, "Christians are evil", "atheists are evil"; more of the usual crap. All I know is; a worm that
lives in your eyes, awesome. May I recommend the book Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, perhaps the best book
on the subject, and so much less lame way to spend your time then trashing other peoples beliefs on the
internet.
Our 6-year-old daughter woke us up in the middle of the night with a terrible pain in her ear, like screaming-bad, excruciating pain. We took her to the ER, and the Doc got wide-eyed when she looked in her ear then turned and told us, "She has a beetle in her ear!" A box elder bug was deep in her ear, and apparently thought the exit was through our daughter's ear drum, which it was scratching on. The Doc poured mineral oil in her ear to drown the bug, and we took her back in the morning so the ENT Doc could do your basic bug extraction.
The same thing happened to my mom when I was a teenager. I woke up in the middle of the night to hearing her moving/jumping around (and in pain). She could feel something buzzing in her ear, and it hurt. I looked, but couldn't tell (it was too far in). Took her to the ER, same thing, a beetle! Her ear was bleeding before they finally got it out. Took awhile, but when they got it out, IT WAS HUGE! She took it to work in the little bottle to show everyone!
Bush did it!!!! No it was Obama!!! No it was Bush!!! Obama, Bush, Obama!!! Okay Obama wins, Obama did it!!!!!!!
I had a type of worm growing in my foot once. You could see it snaking it way up my instep. Doctor could not figure out how I got it since that type of worm only lives in a tropical climate. The closest I was to the tropics was a lake in East Texas. LOL. Doctor prescribed Albendazole and that did the trick.
When are these fundamentalist morons going to learn? This is 'God's punishment' for trying to spread your ridiculous pagan based religion to other pagans.
Friend: "Hey Israel, going fishing?"
Israel: "Yes."
Friend: "Got worms?"
Israel: "Yes, but I'm going anyways!"
@Miss Reno- That is the freakiest thing I have ever heard, kind of odder than this article.....yikes
This is more common than you think. Not just from third world countries. If you've ever eaten raw fish i.e.: sushi you now have the microscopic eggs in your system. It is common in fish. cooking kills the eggs. Now depending on your system, these eggs senses any weakness to your antibodies and that's when they mutate into their larval state. They eventually eat their way out through the capilaric walls to surface and mature in the waters where they are eaten by fish thus beginning the cycle again.
And this is one of many reasons I refuse to eat sushi or any other raw meat.
Worms Roxanne!!! I'm afraid of worms!!
Almost like earwigs. The get in your ear and lay eggs. At the larval state, they feed their way through your eardrum and into your brain tunnelling through to the other side and exit the other ear as they mature.
Sorry CSant- but I can't let that legend pass unmolested. No, earwigs do not go into your ear (on purpose, anyway- one might tumble in accidentally), they do not lay eggs in your ear- and heavens, their larva do not migrate through your brain. They do not have a larval stage, technically speaking- after they hatch from their eggs, they are nymphs (basically miniature, soft-bodied adults) which the mother cares for.They are harmless to humans- even the alarming pincers on their abdomen are incapable of delivering more than a gentle squeeze. They live in cool, damp places and are typically nocturnal. See http://bugguide.net/node/view/2709 for further information.
I would really like to know where Melissa Dahl learned how to get a job posting her personal religious beliefs on a medical information site in the first place. She writes like a senior in high school to begin with. One might just write that A then 25 year old man traveling to (insert country here)...etc. But no.....she has to mention that a Christian minister had this infliction set upon him, as if a Christian was above the diseases of the world.....Dear Miss Dahl, If this is your future, just stick to the facts and leave your personal thoughts and additions to yourself. We seem to know more about you right now than a damn worm that can be killed. You eerily sound like the new voice of Anita Bryant. If you are only 20, look it up.
CRIMINY!!!!! If he had gone to Africa to scare-up an African virgin you'd all be "Hell, I'd settle for a eye-woim for ta git sum (*&%^&*%*!!!!The artile is about a horrid worm ! for Pete's Sake! Mention He's spreading the WORD and the worm is a forgotten issue. All you porn people get ALL upset when your seedy open immoral mind-sets appear threatened. Oh well.
Hey! my name wasn't supposed to be out there! Sorry everyone. You're ALL right.
The fact that you don't believe in Heaven or Hell is not going to make it one degree cooler when you get there ....
Some of us like it really toasty.
When I was a kid I had a live fly in my ear canal. I had just passed a pile of doggie doo and it was covered with those black-blue flies. Walking past the pile must have disturbed them and up they flew...one right into my ear. Never did get it out but just hearing that buzzing sound go on and off drove me crazy and I was screaming. My mom took me to the neighborhood pharmacist who tried pouring peroxide down my ear. Eventually the buzzing stopped but it never came out...not out my ear anyway! To this day I don't like anything flying around my head.
Worms. Why'd it hafta be worms?
:) I wonder if anyone else catches the reference?
I got it :)
I can relate to this in a way. In january 09' ihad to go to jail for 15 days for a mistake i had made. I suffer from anxiety so naturally i thought i was getting hives from the emotion. 1 month out i noticed these bumps had spread from my hands up to my neck down my body infested my unmentionables and down my legs and my wife and her children were also infected. I went to a dermatolagist. needless to say my jail time was nothing compared to what i went through and what i was about to find out. I had been infested by the mite known as "SCABIES". burrowing all over my body it was horrific lice pales in comparison. It was hell on earth in to think thousands of these things were burrowing me and my family.
So for those of you who are throwing stones tell me did i deserve this and did my family deserve this, i paid my debt in jail for a minor traffic violation.
This man went to AFRICA to help people in many ways. IT has nothing to do with religion, Its a spiritual relationship with GOD. dont confuse spiritualality with religion if you do you will never get it. Think about it.
And this is what are Creator asked of as Christians in a relationship with CHRIST to do is to inform people of the gospel all around the world min every corner so that all have people have a choice to decide. No one forces them they simply present the option. I have an aunt and uncle who live in South America and the stories are phenominal. theyve brought hope to a place that had none, due to coca, gorilla warfare, black magic, cannabalism and so on. GOD is great and all are in my prayers.
Some of the tapeworms that people very commonly get are much, much worse. They can grow several feet in length. You just don't see those... well, not until they start coming out ;-)
Can anyone name so much as one single positive thing to ever come out of that freaking stinking sh_thole called Africa?