A Florida man contracted a brain-eating tapeworm from his Christmas dinner.
Months after the meal, Sam Cordero said he started seeing black dots in his left eye.
That was the brain-eating parasitic worm settling into his eye – if it had died there it would’ve blinded him.
He went to an eye doctor who performed a delicate surgery to remove the tapeworm, saving Sam’s brain and vision.
Sam Cordero, pictured, said he contracted a tapeworm after eating undercooked ham around the Christmas holiday
Sam said he didn’t know he had a tapeworm living in him until it made its way to his eye
The dangerous parasite, Taenia solium, had settled in the vitreous chamber of Sam’s eye, the space in the eyeball between the lens and the retina, the light-sensitive tissue lining the back.
‘I see a little black dot and it’s only on the left eye. I see something moving from left to right. When the sun comes out it bothers me a lot,’ Sam told ABC Action News.
‘I believe and suspect it came from undercooked pork we ordered around Christmas holidays and that’s how I believe I got it,’ he added.
The tapeworm, which can be contracted while eating raw or undercooked park and contact with fecal matter, typically attaches itself to the small intestines and develop into adult tape worms – up to eight meters long- over the course of two months.
In Sam’s case, the three millimeter parasite traveled through his bloodstream from his stomach and to his eye.
‘It came through the [vein] and it grew in [there],’ Dr Don Perez, an ophthalmologist at Perez Eye Center, told ABC Action News.
If the tapeworm died in Sam’s vitreous chamber, the inflammation would’ve blinded him.
If the parasite had laid its thousands of eggs, the larvae could’ve traveled to Sam’s brain, leading to cysticercosis, a disease that can cause seizures.
In fact, the pork tapeworm is responsible for 30 percent of epilepsy cases in areas where people live in close proximity to roaming pics, according to the World Health Organization.
‘He’s got a window of opportunity where he can end up with 20/20 vision and parasite free,’ said Dr Perez, who removed the parasite from Sam’s eye.
The brain-eating parasite was 3 millimeters long and was fertilized with thousands of eggs
Dr. Don Perez performed a delicate procedure to remove the tapeworm from Sam’s eye
The procedure was a delicate one.
‘You have to tickle it with light from one side and have the the cutter raised,’ he said. ‘So when [the parasite] shoorts into the cutter from the light, you can actually aspirate and kill it.’
It’s not the first time Perez performed the this procedure. In 2012, he successfully removed a parasite from another patient’s eye.
Although Sam is his second case of parasites finding their way to the eye, Dr Perez said this is extremely rare.
He said there’s been roughly 20 cases worldwide where tapeworms have embedded themselves into the eyeball.
Sam said he didn’t know he had a tapeworm living in him until it made its way to his eye.
In fact, most people with tapeworm infections have no symptoms or experience mild symptoms like abdominal pain, loss of appetite and weight loss.
People with tapeworm infections are usually prescribed anti-parasite medications like praziquantel or niclosamide, according to the CDC.
One way to avoid getting infected with a tapeworm is to cook meat at the proper temperatures – whole cuts of meat should be cooked to at least 145 degrees and ground meat should be cooked to at least 160 degrees.