Lowri Denman was in a restaurant toilet when she made a horrifying discovery: a metre-long tapeworm, slithering into the pan. 'It looked absolutely disgusting, like Sellotape with little ridges in it,' the 42-year-old from Carmarthen recalled. She flushed it away, visited her GP, and was told stool tests were satisfactory. Life carried on as normal.
But within a year, she began suffering 'really bad headaches' she had never experienced before. Then, in 2011, she had her first seizure. 'I was really starting to struggle getting some words out,' she said. 'The next thing I came around and I was in an ambulance.'
“Lowri Denman passed a metre-long tapeworm before being diagnosed with 38 brain parasites after a trip to India.”
A CAT scan and MRI followed. When she returned for the results, the doctor sat her down and delivered the news: 'We've looked at your scans and we've found 38 parasites on your brain.' Lowri and her mother sat with 'jaws on the floor'.
Initially, medics suspected toxoplasmosis, an infection spread through cat faeces. But Lowri's mother asked whether the seizure could be linked to the tapeworm she had passed a year earlier. Further investigations confirmed a diagnosis: neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by the larvae of the pork tapeworm. According to the World Health Organization, the infection can be contracted through water contaminated with tapeworm eggs or poor hygiene.
Lowri believes she picked up the infection during a three-month trip to India in 2007. She had avoided meat, hoping to dodge food poisoning, but Dr Brendan Healy, a consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology, believes she inadvertently ate pork containing microscopic tapeworm eggs.
The aftermath was brutal. Lowri lost her driving licence because of the risk of seizures behind the wheel. She was advised not to bathe alone at home in case she had a seizure. Living by herself, she found it particularly difficult. Her seizures continued as doctors adjusted her epilepsy medication, and she began experiencing anxiety about leaving the house. 'There was one, it was lunchtime, and I was just walking around Cardiff on my own,' she said. 'Luckily I was on the …'
Now, after spending years regaining her health, Lowri wants to turn her ordeal into something positive by raising awareness of the condition. 'It was just so disgusting to think that these things were in my head,' she told PA Real Life. 'Nobody could tell me when I was going to get better.'