Simply Dumb

It’s Not a Tumor - It’s a Worm

by Becky Scott on November 30th, 2008

Imagine the surprise doctors got as they operated on a woman for a brain tumor and instead found a worm. That’s right, a worm.

An Arizona woman was having blurred vision and numbness in her arm. She’d had a cat scan and even went to the ER twice. Doctors didn’t see anything. Until they took a better look at an MRI. And then they decided that something was wrong. Really wrong. They weren’t sure what it was, but there was a ‘thing’ way down in her brain stem.

So they operated. They were surprised at what they found. And relieved. In fact, the surgeon started chuckling! Now that’s a strange response. We think that would be a little disconcerting. Who wants a surgeon to chuckle after cracking open your skull? But he was pleased that it was a worm - something they can remove, something the patient can heal from. A brain stem tumor could be difficult to remove, and dangerous.

Wow. That just really icks us out. Brings new mental pictures to the words “brain worm” - or even “ear worm.”

Doctors aren’t sure how the patient got the worm, but they figured it was most likely due to undercooked pork or improper hand washing.We’ll be washing our hands a lot, thankyouverymuch. Here’s wishing we could scrub our brain of that mental image, too.

[source] Image: Newscom

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POSTED IN: Just Weird