Posted on 09/20/2010 11:02:25 PM PDT by iowamark
John Matthews loves to hunt turkeys and travel to foreign places like Mexico. During one of those adventures, something crawled inside his body.
“It’s so small, you couldn’t even see it, feel it,” Matthews said.
When two dark spots appeared in his vision and his eyesight became a little hazy, he headed to the doctor.
“It was kind of like looking through a muddy lens,” he said.
Doctors struggled to diagnose what was wrong with John’s left eye. Then, Dr. James Folk at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics found the problem.
“Just by luck, the first picture we looked at, we saw the worm, right in the middle of the retina,” Folk said.
A microscopic worm was swimming around inside John’s eye.
“It actually lives underneath the retina of the eye and crawls around and eats the retina,” Folk said. “The worm goes into the gut, digests in the gut, and actually doesn’t crawl through the blood vessels, but crawls through the tissue all the way to the eyes and the brain.”...
Soon after making the diagnosis, Dr. Folk armed himself with a laser and put the worm in the cross-hairs...
Dr. Folk said, “When you hit it with the laser, it got very upset. As upset as a worm can get, I suppose…The thing was just thrashing around violently. It would be like one of those titan movies or something.”...
The worm is dead. It will decompose over time. Now, John must do computer exercises to strengthen his eye...
Folk says, in one day, an adult raccoon can shed 60 million eggs that contain these kinds of worms. Folk says Matthews could have somehow ingested raccoon dander. However, John will probably never know exactly how or when the worm got inside him.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegazette.com ...
Ewwwwwww!
I wonder if there are medical purposes this could be used for?
She had to have eye drops every hour, 24 hours a day, or could have lost her vision.
Thank God her mother was a nurse and helped to care for her.
Very scary.
COOL!
Worms Get in Your Eyyyyyyeeeees!
So did he catch it in Mexico?? Ewwww....Last time I eat Street food in Mexico....Yarg....
Retina. Mmmmm Yum !
Damn you, damn you to hell. That will haunt my dreams for months.
They put creaturez... into our boadies!
There. Those worms don't seem like such a bad option now, do they?
You have me laughing...and my sentiments exaclty.
Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross....
Remind me again never to look at posts entered at 2am Eastern Time....
*shiver*...yuck.
I guess I need glasses or a bigger laptop screen first thing in the morning. I thought the thread title said “WOMAN eats Cedar Rapid man’s retina.”
I thought the same. Maybe we both need our eyes checked:)
Was this kid on drugs, letting an adult botfly the size of a hummingbird implant an egg next to his eye??? These normally present on the back, back of the head or the neck where you don't notice what is going on until it is too late.
Although I once read of a case where one of these was implanted in a man's testicles...I wonder how THAT happened??? Keep away from nude beaches in Central America, FRiends.
Those are such lovely pictures! I’ve gotta go get something to eat now... :)
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