Monsters Inside Me

A 4-year-old boy literally drowns in his own mucus, being a victim of an outbreak of the Enterovirus D68 virus; a 7-year old scraps his knee on a rock at the beach, but when his father puts a liquid bandage on it, it causes it to swell the size of an orange - then, his mother squeezes the wound and finds a snail inside; a college student experiences loss of appetite, fatigue, fever, jaundice, and repetitive nightmares that turn into a reality from getting infected with malaria after returning from a trip to Ghana.

An athlete gets headaches, stomach pains, breathing difficulties, and a liver mass from entamoeba histolytica; a teenager develops a leg welt and then gets fatigue and red spots on his body over the course of several years. When the spots open, the doctors discover he has leprosy; a woman suffers severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, and seizures from E. rostratum.

During a fishing vacation, a soccer coach goes into septic shock from V. vulnificus necrotizing fasciitis; a 7-year-old girl gets facial tics, bouts of anxiety, and turns suicidal after a streptococcal brain infection; A makeup artist gets severe stomach cramps and watery diarrhea from Giardia lamblia.

A newlywed woman gets extreme headaches, memory problems, sinus pressure, and painful rashes, while her husband gets endless nosebleeds, breathing problems, and brain fog from aspergillus; a councilman loses his spleen to visceral leishmaniasis; a 6-year-old gets a fever, red spots, a hurting mouth, loss of appetite, leg weakness, and breathing difficulties from rat bite fever.

An 11-month-old boy experiences wheezing and vomiting after swallowing a button battery; a landscaper becomes infected with paragonimus kellicotti; a female boxer gets a severe headache, a 105 fever, and impaired vision from cat scratch fever.

A 2-year-old girl experiences severe pain and vomiting from a bark scorpion sting; a neuroscientist experiences multi-organ failure and nearly dies from leptospirosis; a 20-year-old woman suffers from severe vomiting and extreme headaches that turn out to be caused by balamuthia mandrillaris.

A young collage student contracts acanthamoeba keratitis from sleeping in her contact lenses; an infant becomes temporarily paralyzed and almost dies from accidental ingestion of soil that contained the most deadly toxin known to science, botulinum toxin; a new mother has extreme pain from a piece of gauze (surgical sponge) that was left inside her abdomen during a C-Section.

A California teenager is unable to breathe after contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; a Hawaiian personal trainer suffers years of neuropathic pain from ciguatera poisoning; a Michigan health worker nearly dies from babesiosis.

A baby is having problems controlling the left side of her body, before doctors discover the right side of her brain is malformed; a PR executive suffers a mysterious ailment over the course of an entire year; seizures ruin a schoolteacher's Thanksgiving, and they worsen around Christmas.

A teenager turns feverish and fatigued when he gets a cut on his knee; a couple move into a new home to nasty rashes, breathing difficulties, and memory loss; something is destroying an 8-year-old's retinas.