- What sounds like science fiction was all too real for
Dawn Becerra, who found a parasitic worm lodged in her brain after eating
a pork taco while vacationing in Mexico.
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- Doctors at Arizona's Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale
believe the taco contained Taenia solium, a parasite that is surprisingly
common in Latin American countries, and is often transmitted by
eating undercooked pork.
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- Becerra said the snack made her ill for three weeks.
And soon after, she began suffering seizures.
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- "I was tired and sick so it made it more difficult,"
she said. "I knew that this wasn't the way I wanted to live the rest
of my life, with seizures."
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- She found that anti-seizure medication did not help her,
and her condition worsened.
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- A Worm Inside Her Brain
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- Doctors at the Mayo Clinic discovered Becerra had neurocysticercosis
- a lesion in her brain, caused by the parasitic worm.
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- Last November, she was told that if she wanted to live
a normal, seizure-free life, she would need surgery.
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- As an egg, the worm attached itself to the intestinal
wall, and eventually moved into her blood stream and to her brain, said
Dr. Joseph Sirven, who operated on Becerra.
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- Once in the brain, the worm causes little harm until
it eventually dies and decays, thereby inflaming surrounding tissue.
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- "It's after the worm dies that the body reacts to
something foreign," Sirven explained.
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- "The thought of a worm being in your brain is very
strange, very difficult to deal with," she said. But the thought of
brain surgery wasn't easy to deal with, either.
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- "All of a sudden, I realized they were going to
cut open my brain, and take a worm out of my brain" she said.
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- "That realization was devastating."
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- Six-Hour Operation to Find the Parasite
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- She underwent the six-hour procedure last week - awake
the entire time, and using only acupuncture and a mild anesthesia to deal
with the pain.
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- Doctors said they needed her conscious because the procedure
would take them into an extremely sensitive area of the brain - and would
have to talk to her during the operation to help keep track of what they
were doing.
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- They spoke to the bilingual Becerra in both Spanish and
English during the operation.
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- Eventually, they found the decayed worm and removed it
- without doing any long-term damage to their patient.
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- "She was very lucky because she had only one cyst,"
said Sirven.
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- "She should be in good shape now."
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- Becerra is recovering quickly, and doctors say she won't
need a check up for six months.
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- But it has still been a bizarre and difficult ordeal
for her.
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- "The fascinating part about this is that it's much
more common than people think," notes Sirven. And by cooking pork
thoroughly, he says, "it's very, very preventable."
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- The World Health Organization says neurocysticercosis
is a common cause of epilepsy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
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- ABCNEWS affiliate KNXV in Phoenix contributed to this
report. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/brainworm010410.html
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