Four years after returning from a two-month trip to India, Lowri Denman went to the toilet and passed a metre-long tapeworm. She had no symptoms or signs that anything was wrong, and after seeing a doctor she was confident the worst was over.
It was not. The Cardiff-based woman, now 42, had picked up the parasitic infection during her 2007 travels, when she was in her mid-twenties. She had kept to a vegetarian diet to reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses, but according to the World Health Organisation, tapeworms can be caused by water contaminated with tapeworm eggs or poor hygiene practices.
“A woman passed a metre-long tapeworm and later developed 38 brain parasites after a trip to India.”
Lowri began experiencing “really bad headaches”, which she had never suffered from before, and in 2011 she had a tonic-clonic seizure – characterised by stiffness, loss of consciousness and jerking movements, according to the NHS. She sought medical advice immediately, but waited three months for a brain scan. The result: neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection of the brain caused by the larvae of the pork tapeworm – and 38 parasites in her head.
“It was just so disgusting to think that these things were in my head,” she told PA Real Life.
Doctors treated her for epilepsy while consulting tropical disease experts across the globe to decide how to eliminate the parasites. But the seizures continued, and Lowri’s life unravelled. She lost her driving licence because of the risk of fitting behind the wheel. She was advised not to do certain things while at home alone, such as having a bath, in case she had a seizure. Living alone, she found it particularly difficult.
Anxiety about leaving the house set in. “There was one, it was lunchtime, and I was just walking around Cardiff on my own,” she said. “Luckily I was on the phone to my…”
The repeated flare-ups over a decade brought psychosis and uncertainty about her future. Nobody could tell her when it would stop.