Monsters Inside Me

A fit and active dance instructor is suddenly stopped in her tracks by unbearable abdominal pain and vomiting, and a mysterious mass in her colon is revealed to have decaying worms. A middle-aged banker gets seizures from a parasite he picked up from traveling to his home country, Haiti. A scientist finds worms from Africa that threaten to damage his sight living in his skin and eyes.

A schoolteacher deals with an amoeba that eats at his liver and causes him high fever, abdominal pain, sweating, and chills. A young dancer gets worms from eating contaminated pork in her muscle tissue, causing her to get hives all over her body and her limbs to become stiff and painful. A retiree gets scabies from mites he got from staying in the hospital in the past.

A nine-year-old hockey player comes down with encephalitis from the Acanthamoeba, which causes him to lose his concentration and balance, almost killing him. A computer programmer gets severe malaria from the Plasmodium parasite that makes him lose control of his mind and post-malarial neurological symptoms two weeks after an apparent recovery. A marathon runner deals with Leishmaniasis, which causes his spleen to swell.

The Crytosporidium parasite infects a little girl, causing her severe vomiting and diarrhea. A microscopic amoeba kills a firefighter with an autoimmune disorder by causing him meningitis. A rare, vicious tapeworm detaches the retina in a teenaged girl, destroying vision in her left eye.

A young college student gets a strange wound that slowly grows and oozes from Leishmaniasis after traveling to two countries from South America. An animal volunteer deals with a cat hookworm when a kitten scratches her on the chest. A couple deal with a strange rash that spreads on their bodies from a parasite they picked up after eating sushi in Africa.

A carpenter deals with the Japanese lung fluke, which causes him to have trouble breathing, from eating live crabs. A bike rider develops a rash on her groin and upper thighs from a parasitic worm called Schistosoma, which could possibly give her bladder cancer. A guidance counselor, who was an army veteran, develops an insatiable appetite, unusual weight loss, and abdominal pain pulls out a parasitic roundworm called Ascaris lumbricoides, which he picked up from eating contaminated food while serving in the army.

A teenaged boy gets a maggot in his eye, making it impossible for him to see clearly. A construction worker deals with a tumor-like mass from a parasitic tapeworm that causes him severe pain in his pelvis and legs. A nine-year-old girl gets infected with the Giardia parasite, which gives her severe stomach cramps.

A peace volunteer deals with a leech in his nose, which gives him a strange nosebleed. A nature-loving landscaper gets a severe allergic reaction when he gets multiple bee stings at once and infects himself with the hookworm parasite to relieve his symptoms. A six-year-old girl gets a strange red spot on her foot from having a maggot in her foot.

A middle-aged man who has been caring for his ailing mother gets Babesiosis from walking barefoot to the mailbox. Since he lost his spleen from cancer, he gets severe diarrhea, in addition to fever, fatigue, and night sweats. An active, busy middle-aged woman experiences stomach cramps, explosive diarrhea, lightheadedness, and blurred vision from the Toxocara parasite, which she probably got from contaminated food. An older mother of five children deals with nausea, loss of appetite, muscle spasms, and vomiting from the Strongyloides worm, which she may have picked up from being in contact with infected soil. Because of steroids she took for her breathing problems, her body became more vulnerable to the parasite.

A seven-year-old girl suffers from seizures from a pork tapeworm after being adopted at the age of three from Nepal. A forty-five-year-old machinist deals with blurry and double vision, leaving him legally blind in his left eye, from a raccoon roundworm that he picked up from his turkey hunting. A forty-one-year-old anaethesiologists, along with twenty-eight other anaethesiologists from two different counties, suffer from stomach cramps and crippling diarrhea from the Cyclospora parasite after eating raspberries infected with human feces.