A Cardiff woman has opened up on her shock after discovering 38 parasites living inside her brain following a holiday in India.
Lowri Denman, 42, found a metre-long tapeworm while using a restaurant toilet, describing it as “absolutely disgusting, like Sellotape with like little ridges in it”.
The gruesome find was her first indication of neurocysticercosis, a rare brain infection caused by pork tapeworm larvae that triggers severe headaches, seizures and psychosis.
Her consultant, Dr Brendan Healy, a specialist in infectious diseases and microbiology, believes she contracted the infection during a three-month journey through India in 2007.
Despite deliberately avoiding meat throughout her travels to prevent food poisoning, Dr Healy suspects she unknowingly ingested pork containing microscopic tapeworm eggs.
Only a handful of people in Britain receive this diagnosis every year.
Three years passed before the tapeworm emerged in 2010, and Ms Denman flushed it away without realising its significance.
She visited her GP, but stool tests returned normal results and she felt healthy, so she carried on with her life.
Lowri Denman, 42, found a metre-long tapeworm while using a restaurant toilet
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Within 12 months, however, debilitating headaches began plaguing her.
Her first seizure struck in 2011, leaving her struggling to form words before losing consciousness.
“The next thing I came around and I was in an ambulance and I was like: ‘How has that happened? Why?'” she recalled.
After she underwent brain scans in hospital, doctors delivered devastating news.
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Dr Brendan Healy believes she contracted the infection during a three-month journey through India in 2007
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“The doctor sat me down and said: ‘Right, okay, we’ve looked at your scans and we’ve found 38 parasites on your brain’,” the 42-year-old said.
Physicians initially suspected toxoplasmosis, but her mother connected the seizure to the tapeworm discovery, leading to the correct diagnosis.
Ms Denman spent a fortnight in hospital receiving anti-parasitic medication and steroids.
Treatment initially appeared successful, allowing her to travel to New Zealand, relocate to Bristol, participate in circus classes and complete half marathons.
Ms Denman spent a fortnight in hospital receiving anti-parasitic medication and steroids
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Then she collapsed at work, with scans revealing significant swelling around the parasites in her brain.
Confusion, numbness and tingling sensations followed, forcing her to abandon her career and move in with her father in Carmarthen.
Steroids changed her physical appearance, and as her world shrank, her mental health deteriorated catastrophically.
“This paranoia and psychosis started kicking in there was severe anxiety, panic attacks,” she said, spending six weeks in a neuropsychiatric facility.
Dr Healy suspects she unknowingly ingested pork containing microscopic tapeworm eggs
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GETTY
Her friend of two decades, Nicola Brown, was shocked by the transformation after a month apart.
“I walked into the room and she was essentially behaving like a child,” she recalled.
“Crawling around on the floor, hiding behind a curtain, sitting on her dad’s lap as if she was five.”
The visit ended with Ms Denman swearing at her friend and telling her never to return, later sending a text claiming police were pursuing her.
Recovery proved lengthy and arduous, with the 42-year-old completing an art foundation course in Carmarthen before feeling strong enough by 2018 to return to Cardiff for an interior design degree.
She resumed working in 2022, and the parasites have now calcified in her brain without requiring surgical removal.
Dr Healy described her as a once-in-a-career patient whose case had been discussed by leading experts in Britain and the US.
Ms Denman has been seizure-free since 2017, though she will take epilepsy medication for the rest of her life.
“What I want to do now is progress in my life and spread awareness of this disease and do something positive with it,” she said.