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When a woman in Texas suddenly started getting debilitating headaches, doctors never would have guessed what they ended up finding in her brain.
Yadira Rostro was stunned when a CT scan revealed that she might have a brain tumor, but after experiencing serious headaches for nine months, she just wanted to hurry up and get on with the surgery.
“Sometimes my sight was impaired... I could not see properly,” she said.
It wasn’t until doctors did a more refined MRI scan, however, that Rostro finally learned the truth: She had parasites living inside her brain.
“We did an incision at the base of the skull removing part of her skull, splitting the cerebellum and right then could see the sacs at the base of the brain stem,” Rostro's neurosurgeon, Dr. Richard Meyrat, explained to the Houston Chronicle.
Meyrat couldn’t believe it when he found a liquid-filled space at the base of Rostro’s skull containing what appeared to be larval sacs.
“They looked a little bit like eggs, and they have a clear sac,” he told WFAA. “And inside it, a small tapeworm.”
Although tapeworms are usually intestinal parasites—picked up by eating food or drinking water contaminated by fecal matter—it is possible for them to make their way into their host’s brain.
After speaking with Rostro, doctors now believe she picked up the disgusting parasite during a vacation to Mexico years ago.
