Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images News / Getty Images
A man went to the doctor complaining of migraines, no this isn't a setup to a joke or a statistical question on an exam, this is a real person who found a parasite in his brain!
A 52 year old man, went to the doctor after his chronic migranes was going on for four months and his prescribed medication stopped working. After a scans, multiple cysts were found in both hemispheres of his brain, which infectious disease doctors confirmed was a pork tapeworm that laid eggs in his brain.
Doctors believe that he the worm from eating undercooked bacon after the man said he preferred soft bacon. Doctors diagnosed that he had parasitic infection neurocysticercosis, or that weird sounding infection from that one episode of Gray's Anatomy. Doctors believe the parasite entered his body via undercooked bacon, and traveled from the intestine to the brain through the bloodstream. There are an estimated 1,320 and 5,050 cases of neurocysticercosis every year in the US, as a person can catch it by swallowing microscopic eggs passed from the feces of someone who has an intestinal pork tapeworm, as this is called an autoinfection.
The man was taken to the ICU and given medicatoins to treat worm infections, and now the patient's cysts went away, and his migraines improved.