Pork Tapeworm Case

Danielle’s brain was infected by a cysticercosis infection caused by an infection from a pork tapeworm. The worm made its way into her brain and settled above the speech center of her brain. The prolonged death of the worm created many problems for her. It affected her ability to speak, a history of migraines and spasms of muscles in her face. The early diagnosis for Danielle was that she was suffering a brain tumor from a cancer that was attacking the brain. There were multiple consultations with doctors and various ideas of treatments were put forth to treat the tumor. The prognosis for all of them was a very delicate procedure that would require some form of surgery on the brain. One of the treatments was a surgery performed while they talked to Danielle making sure that they did not severely damage the speech centers in her brain. Others felt that this type of surgery would be extremely dangerous and

The main cause of this form of tapeworm infection comes from eating undercooked pork. The worm enters the body through the undercooked meat and then enters the stomach where it then moves into the bowels. Once in the bowels it makes a comfy home and then tries to reproduce where the eggs then can move into the blood stream and around the body. If you consume an egg it can pass through the stomach wall and enter the blood stream and be deposited anywhere in the body. This is possibly what happened to Danielle. She was found to only have one worm in her body. Danielle is Jewish and due to the dictates of her religion the idea of a pork tapeworm were dismissed. Pork is considered unclean and it is prohibited for Jews to eat pork. This misdiagnosis took place in California where this type of tapeworm infection is quite common due to the strong Hispanic population in the area. She believed that she contracted the disease from eating an infected salad in