Strange News Round-up – November 5th, 2015

Forget Ear Worms – Meet The Brain Worm

If you’re eating, stop.

A Californian student has had a tapeworm removed. So far, so unpleasant, but just one of those things some of us have to go through. But Luis Ortiz’s resident worms were in his brain. Luis, 26, first fell ill with a headache that was so bad his mum got him straight into hospital, where a camera revealed that tape worm larvae had set up home in his brain where they were within 30 minutes of killing him. Naturally, Luis said yes to an emergency operation – surgeons told him the creature was still wriggling when they took it out.

While tapeworms usually arrive in the intestine when someone drinks infected water or eats uncooked, infected meat and stay there, some types produce larvae which get into the blood stream and travel to where they please in the body. Luis has suffered, but has managed an entry into the quote of the year lists: “I don’t know how long that worm has been in my head.”

Read more here.