This sounds horrific!!!
Backpacker Daniela Liverani was vacationing in Vietnam, but she brought home an unexpected — and super gross — souvenir! A 3-inch leech living in her nose!
The Edinburgh bartender thought it was a busted blood vessel from when she fell off her motorcycle, but it was so much worse than that! She explained:
“About two weeks before I came home from Asia, I started having nosebleeds. I’d fallen off a motorbike just before they started so at first I thought I must have burst a blood vessel. After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril. I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds├óΓé¼┬ª I saw him so many times but I just sniffed him back up. I tried to blow him out and grab him but I couldn’t get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose. When I was in the shower, he would come right out as far as my bottom lip and I could see him sticking out the bottom of my nose. So when that happened last Thursday, I jumped out of the shower to look really closely in the mirror and I saw ridges on him. That’s when I realised he was an animal. My friend Jenny and I called NHS 24 and were told to get to accident and emergency as soon as possible.”
Terrifying! We can’t believe that she didn’t realize it was a leech, but the important thing is that Daniela got to the doctor.
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And then taking the leech out was even grosser! She said:
“The staff were horrified. The doctor used a nose forceps to pry my nostrils open really wide ├óΓé¼ΓÇ£ it was agony. The nurse and Jenny pinned me down to the bed. Whenever the doctor grabbed him, I could feel tugging at the inside of my nose. Then all of a sudden, after about half an hour, the pain stopped and the doctor had the leech in the tweezers. He was about as long as my forefinger but as fat as my thumb. He could move so fast as well, which freaked me out. I’ve no idea how he got up there but he’d have got bigger and bigger from feeding on my blood. He had been curled up in a big ball, using my nostril as a little nest, so Jenny and I called him Mr Curly. At one point, I could feel him up at my eyebrow. I asked the doctor what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gone to hospital and she said he’d probably have worked his way into my brain.”
SCARY!!!
So how in the world did Daniela get this leech?!
Curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and leech expert Mark Siddal explained that she could have gotten the leech from swimming or even just drinking water!
He also added that the leech was probably that size when it entered Daniela’s nose, so he’s not sure how she didn’t feel it go in!
This is so creepy, but we’re glad Daniela is out of the woods and leech-free! [Image via Caters News Agency.]
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