Thread: Man told he has 30 minutes to live after tapeworm found in his brain

Man told he has 30 minutes to live after tapeworm found in his brain







Luis Ortiz, from California had life-saving emergency surgery to remove the live tapeworm inside his head.
Mr Ortiz was taken to Queen of the Valley Medical Centre after suffering with the "worst headache" of his life. A brain scan revealed a live tapeworm was living inside his brain causing the pain.

The 26-year-old student was told he only had about 30 minutes to live by doctors and needed immediate surgery to remove the tapeworm.
Ortiz’ neurosurgeon, Dr. Soren Singel said “it was a close call” and Ortiz was lucky he went to hospital when he did.

The surgeons put Ortiz into a coma to perform the surgery. Using a camera, they discovered a sac of larvae from the tapeworm inside the brain.
The parasitic tapeworm had formed a cyst that blocked the flow of water to Luis’ brain, which left any longer could have been fatal.

Mr Ortiz said, “The doctor pulled it out and he said it was still wiggling…what are the odds I’d get a parasite in my head?”

However, Singel said parasitic worms in human bodies are not uncommon, and are usually "caused by eating infected pork, beef or fish.

The surgery has impacted his life heavily. “My memory is like a work in progress”, Mr Ortiz said. “It gets better from therapy”, he added, but he has to remind himself to do his memory exercises.
The headaches began in August, but Mr Ortiz said he"just ignored it” at first.

He is recovering from the surgery and hopes to finish university.

Man told he has 30 minutes to live after tapeworm found in his brain - Independent.ie

Thanks to modern medicine or we would all be crawling with something or other. Yuck!!

^^Be dead !!!.

so how did it get from his belly to his brain ?

Originally Posted by KEVIN2008

he has to remind himself to do his memory exercises

It could be worse...

Man with stomach pain excretes a 6.2 METRE tapeworm caused by his love of raw beef

Doctors treating a man with stomach pain were astonished to discover a huge tapeworm inside him that was more than 6.2 meters long.
The 38-year-old had gone to hospital after three days of vomiting and feeling weak.
There, he told doctors that over the past two years he had suffered from pain in his stomach and abdomen, loss of appetite, weight loss and long-term anaemia due to iron deficiency.
Medics from the Hubei University of Medicine, in Shiyan, China, examined him but found ‘nothing remarkable’, the New England Journal of Medicine reports.
But when they looked at his stools under a microscope they found an oncosphere – the egg of a tapeworm.

A 38-year-old Chinese man was found to have a tapeworm more than 6.2 metres (20 foot) long inside him. The red arrow points to the worm's head, known as its scolex, which attaches to the small intestine



The man revealed he had a tendency to eat raw beef, which is a known cause of infection with such worms.
Doctors immediately gave him the drug praziquantel, which is used to treat parasitic infections.
He also drank mannitol, a colourless sweet-tasting crystalline alcohol, as a laxative.
Two-and-a-half hours later he excreted a tapeworm that was more than 6.2m in length.

The Chang squirts should solve the problem in LOS


Read more: Man with stomach pain excretes a 6.2 METRE tapeworm caused by eating raw beef | Daily Mail Online
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

6.2 METRE tapeworm

Jesus a lot of grunting & groaning to squeeze that out.

If that came out of my rectum, I would have kept the worm as a pet and named him something cool; like Mr. Bumworm.

Originally Posted by KEVIN2008

He is recovering from the surgery and hopes to finish university.

If he can remember how to get there.

Originally Posted by blue

so how did it get from his belly to his brain ?

By VIP bus from Morchit.

I'd make it one helluva 30 minutes.

Damn the world never seems to amaze me

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

praziquantel

You can buy that OTC here in Thailand. Me and my missus took it as a precautionary measure and it laid us up in bed for 2 days. Not recommended.