Brain noodles: always wash your greens

[Helix]

Please remember to wash your greens before you stick 'em inna salad.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/28/live-worm-living-womans-brain-australia-depression-forgetfulness

It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.”

The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient, prompting her to call on Senanayake and other hospital colleagues for advice about what to do next.

You can contract helminth infections -- nematodes, flukes, tapeworms -- from a lot of sources. Among the more common are hydatids (from dogs) and rat lungworm (mostly from snails), but there are plenty of others.

 

[ImportantJackal]

Rat lungworm is terrifying. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

 

[Brigid Barry]

All you need to stop you from eating raw fish and unwashed lettuce is a handful of episodes of Monsters Inside Me. 99% of the episodes were about parasites but there was one about a bristle from a grill brush and one about a sponge that had been left in a lady's sinus cavity. All the rest? Parasites.

 

[bunny hugger]

Whenever people are fully nostalgic about the "good old days" I think of how when my Mom was a child she went to funerals for her peers who died from hydatids. It wasn't all sunshine and roses before effective antihelminthics were developed.