Larvae Series 2: Brain Larvae

WARNING: SUPER GROSS PICTURES AHEAD ARE BOUND TO EMPTY YOUR PUNY INTESTINES!!! STAY CLEAR!!!


Due to superbly popular demand by people who had kindly chanced upon my humble blog, I have decided to give a second episode of the "Attack of the Body Larvae!"


1. Ingrown Hair Version

Email article:
HOPE YA' GOT A STRONG STOMACH!! READ THE STORY FIRST!!!
Subject: This is a true story! - READ THE STORY 1st
Dude gets an ingrown hair. It gets infected, now he has a boil. Ought to go to the doc and get it lanced but he doesn't.

Weeks pass. The boil grows, eroding downward toward his skull. Ought to go to the hospital in a jiffy but he doesn't.
Weeks pass. The infection reaches his skull. Bone, once infected, presents little barrier to the spread of infection to contiguous bone and so it spreads within his skull. Ought to spend a good long time in the hospital but he doesn't. The bone dies and begins to erode.
Weeks pass. At some point the smell attracts flies which begin to lay eggs in his festering wound and maggots take hold.
Weeks pass. The infection breaches the inner layer of his skull and reaches the meninges.
Weeks pass. Though their tensile strength is impressive the meninges are quite thin and the infection breaches them. Now, infection and maggots set to work on his brain. Your brain just isn't supposed to be on your outside and presents almost no barrier to anything when exposed. Infection and maggots get to work on his brain.

This makes him feel a little wobbly on his feet and so, what do you know, he decides to see the doctor. He walks in to the Stanford ER, where these photos were taken, just as you see him here.

2. 'Sushi Worm' Version

Email Article:

Subject: FW: Sushi worms to sushi lovers........
This is a true case of a japanese man from Gifu Prefecture who complains incessantly about a persistent headache. Mr. Shota Fujiwara loves his sashimi and sushi very much to the extent of trying to get them as "alive and fresh" as can be for his insatiable appetite.

He developes a severe headache for the past 3 years and has put it off as migraine and stress from work. It was only when he started losing his psycomotor skills that he seeks medical help. A brain scan and x-ray reveals little however. But upon closer inspection by a specialist on his scalp, the doctor noticed small movements beneath his skin. It was then that the doctor did a local anaesthetic to his scalp and discovered the cause when tiny worms crawled out. A major surgery was thus immediately called for and the extent of the infestation was horrific. See the attached pictures to the scene that one thought only a movie could produced.

Remember, tapeworms and roundworms and their eggs which abounds in all fishes fresh or saltwater can only be killed by thorough cooking and/or freezing the fish to between 4 degC - 0 degsC. The eggs of these parasites can only be killed if it is cooked or frozen to the said temperatures for a week or more. Think twice about that raw dish next time... or you might get a headache.

Analysis:

While medical experts agree that the accompanying stories are fiction, debate over the authenticity of the images themselves is ongoing. When I showed them to pathologist Ed Friedlander, he concluded they had been faked, largely because most of the anatomical landmarks one would expect to find in a dissected brain are nowhere to be seen. Another expert speculated that the photos could be real, but, if so, depict a very serious case of scalp cancer, not a "brain infection." In any case, no one was able to account for their origin.

In a new development, the debunkers at Snopes.com have determined, based on information from an unnamed but presumably reliable source, that the images are indeed real and document the case of 70-year-old man suffering from "an unusual form of cancer which had eaten away at the upper portion of his skull and scalp." Contacted for a follow-up opinion, Dr. Friedlander agreed the explanation is plausible, but in his judgment the photos may still have been retouched. "I cannot account for the apparent maggots and apparent eggs," he wrote.
Surprisingly, the Snopes.com source also lends partial credence to one of the email texts — the "ingrown hair" story, which claims the patient was ultimately treated at "Stanford ER." The source confirmed that the photographs were indeed taken at Stanford University Hospital, where the subject was brought by ambulance after a minor traffic accident (note that he did not "walk in," as the email alleges, complaining of feeling "a little wobbly on his feet"). Also confirmed, elevating the story's plausibility another slight notch, was the claim that the patient never sought treatment for the disease even though it had progressed to the horrific point we see in the photos, "because the condition was not causing him pain."

None of the foregoing, obviously, had anything to do with an ingrown hair, but it would appear that whoever made up that fanciful version of events was at least dimly aware of the actual circumstances.

As to Mr. Fujiwara, the sushi fanatic who supposedly contracted brain worms by eating raw fish, that variation of the tale is simply preposterous. While the medical literature supports the claim that certain species of tapeworm and roundworm can infect the human digestive tract when consumed in raw or undercooked fish, I could find no indication that these particular parasites (in contrast to the pork tapeworm, which is capable of causing a wider, more serious array of symptoms) can migrate to other human organs, such as the brain. In documented cases where pork tapeworm larvae have been found in the brain, they were embedded, cyst-like, in the neural tissue; they don't crawl around freely, nor are they capable of boring through the patient's skull and emerging through the scalp.

To set the record straight, maggots can infest the human brain, and so can certain types of tapeworm larvae. But these conditions are pretty rare and, in spite of what you may have heard through the email grapevine, they don't result from ignoring ingrown hairs or binging on sushi.

LOL hope everyone has a GREAT time reading the long articles!