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WEDNESDAY APRIL 11 2001

Doctors extract taco worm from holidaymaker's brain

FROM GRACE BRADBERRY IN LOS ANGELES

DAWN BECERRA went on holiday to Mexico and ate a pork taco from a street stand. It is a supper she will never forget and one that doubtless will serve as a cautionary traveller’s tale for years to come.
First, Mrs Becerra, a teacher from California, was ill for three weeks; next, she began to have seizures; last week, her ordeal finally came to an end when brain surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, extracted the remains of a dead worm that had been left behind by the taco.

The six-hour operation was performed with Mrs Becerra conscious the whole time, as only acupuncture and a mild anaesthetic were used to dull the pain.

This was partly at Mrs Becerra’s request because she feared losing her bilingual abilities as a result of the procedure. Throughout the operation, doctors spoke to her in both English and Spanish as they worked on an extremely sensitive area of the brain.

Despite her composure during the surgery, Mrs Becerra has admitted that she was initially horrified when the diagnosis was made in November. Doctors told her that she would need brain surgery to lead a normal, seizure-free life.

“The thought of a worm being in your brain is very strange, very difficult to deal with,” she told a television station in Phoenix. “But the thought of brain surgery wasn’t easy to deal with either.

“All of a sudden, I realised that they were going to cut open my brain and take a worm out. I don’t even know if I had cried before this. I guess I have a couple of times, but that realisation was devastating.”

The condition is one of the biggest causes of seizures and epilepsy in Latin America and South-East Asia, but it is unusual in the United States.

Joseph Sirven, the epilepsy specialist who diagnosed Mrs Becerra’s affliction, said that she had been fortunate because there was only one worm. “If you have enough of these cysts, they can take over the entire brain. Luckily for Dawn, she only had the one.”

The worms, which are borne through undercooked food, travel first to the large intestine and then enter the bloodstream. They settle in locations that are conducive to growth, such as the brain and kidneys.

The diagnosis was made based on Mrs Becerra’s certainty that her health problems had followed the consumption of the pork taco and on a brain scan. However, Richard Zimmerman, the neurosurgeon who performed the operation, decided to remove the part of the brain that was causing the seizures so that he could be certain it was not a tumour. Pathology tests subsequently confirmed that it had been a worm. “It was not a live worm,” Dr Sirven said, “but it’s the remnants that cause the problem, not the live worm.”

The worm had destroyed part of Mrs Becerra’s brain tissue, but the doctors were able to remove both the worm and the damaged tissue without causing long-term damage to the patient.

She is doing well and will not need a check-up for six months.

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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"I know I'm homophobic, but not about gay guys; they don't bother me at all. It's straight guys who don't know they're gay -- they fuck my shit right up."
-- King Missile - "Gay, not gay"

Validictorian of the danked school of OA.com etiquette.

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stacker 2 look out
we have these threads

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Now seeking junior Brownstones to adopt

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Bring back the most disgusting pic contest!!!

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SIG PIC CREATED BY Jolene78

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Bring back the most disgusting pic contest!!!

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just came back on today, and read the tast updates, then this...i feel sickly

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SIG PIC CREATED BY Jolene78

E-Mail Me
METS will go ALL THE WAY THIS YEAR !!!!!!!!!!! (ok maybe not this year but i aint chainging this)
Yankees & the Braves SUCK !!!!!!!!

Resident Strip Club Pimp

& not so Proud Member of the OA.com Stalker Society