Mind-Boggling Medical Series: Worms Crawling Out of a Woman's Body

MedBound Times presents a series of astonishing real-life situations that range from spooky to scary and will leave you in a state of shock long after you have finished reading these stories. In this series, we provide first-hand accounts from patients and medical professionals who have suffered from uncommon infectious diseases that have since become life-threatening.

This series brought to you by MedBound Times takes reference from the American documentary television program Monsters Inside Me. Without further ado, let's explore some mindboggling real-world instances of medical illnesses that made their mark on the annals of medicine.

Living 20 miles north of Seattle in Millcreek, Washington, were Victoria Sutton and Cameron Lillibridge. Victoria Sutton adored how Cameron always made her laugh and that she was lucky to have met him because he put in a lot of effort and went above and beyond to pamper and spoil her. They were a really in-love pair. Cameron admired Victoria's spontaneous nature and sense of adventure. They enjoyed taking walks and enjoying a glass or two of wine while they were together. They both met at church, and religion still has a big influence on both of their lives. Victoria had a generous personality and enjoyed showing others her love. She worked for a religious youth organization.

When Victoria was working at her mother's restaurant during the summer, she noticed a swelling in her ankle the size of a baseball. She was surprised because she didn't remember hurting her ankle and thought it might be an allergic reaction or the result of spending too long shifts standing at her mother's restaurant. Victoria managed to continue her shift at the restaurant while using an ice pack to reduce the swelling. She then went to Cameron's house to show him her swollen ankle, but Cameron barely gave it a second thought. Cameron didn't seem phased by this and persuaded Victoria not to worry about it because an ice pack could take care of the problem quickly. Victoria's swelling subsided after a few weeks of using an ice pack on her ankle, suggesting that Cameron's plan appeared to have been successful.

A few months later, when Victoria was getting ready for her friend's party, she felt a swelling in her jaw. She became concerned and assumed the swelling was an allergic response. On the side of her face, she felt as though a bee had stung her. She made an additional effort with her appearance and makeup to seem particularly adorable that day because she didn't want people to see her with a puffy face. But Cameron didn't seem to care in the least, and he appeared to concur that it was a terrible sight. Victoria put on her brave face and went to the party, but she remembered it being a difficult chore and putting on a brave face while her face looked like a chipmunk. She made an effort to rejoice at her friend's house despite feeling self-conscious due to a bloated face. Her jaw's swelling started to go down a few days later, but it wasn't long before it returned to another area of her body. Victoria recalled having a swollen right eyelid when she woke up, and when she went to the mirror to check the puffiness in her eye, she discovered she couldn't even open her eyelids or move her eye in any way.

Because of her poor vision, she felt strange, and when she revealed this to Cameron, he thought it was just a little incident and nothing to worry about. Victoria was overthinking everything, Cameron reasoned, and perhaps she was allergic to everything. Ibuprofen helped Victoria's swelling go down after she took it. A few months later, while assisting friends with moving into a new apartment, Victoria felt a shooting pain in her hand. Her hand needed a cold compress since she could nearly feel her bones scraping against one another, and the agonizing pain forced her to stop moving in the middle of it.

A few days later, Victoria went to see her family doctor. The doctor examined Victoria's hand and performed some blood tests, all of which later proved to be negative. Victoria felt as though she had reached a dead end, which upset and frustrated her. Victoria's physician suggested she wear hand braces, but the residual agony persisted despite this. Then, a happy event occurred in her life when Cameron proposed to Victoria because he wanted to commit to her and establish a large family in the future. A few months later, Victoria was sewing some centerpieces for the wedding since she wanted it to be a DIY affair; however, she had to stop because of the sudden, intense pain she experienced in her hands. She had the impression that the inside of her hands was on fire, which frustrated and infuriated her because she was unable to use them. Hearing about her wrist irritated Cameron, and he thought, "Here we go again!" Cameron, in Victoria's opinion, became frustrated since he was powerless to address the issue; however, Victoria merely wanted him to empathize with her and pay attention to her and did not expect him to resolve the issue.

Victoria stopped sewing because she thought she would have to spend the rest of her life with a disability, so she asked her family to assist her instead. Her swellings continued to appear and then vanish over the course of the following few months. Mercifully, the swelling disappeared on the day of her wedding, but a few days later, she experienced another odd symptom. When she first woke up in the morning, she felt something inside her eye and initially believed it was just an eyelash. However, when she went to look at it in the mirror, she was horrified to see that there was a long, white, stringy object wriggling and squirming inside her eye. When she noticed the object moving within her eye, she was utterly terrified. Victoria's shouts woke Cameron up, and when he went to check on her, he discovered Victoria freaking out in the bathroom. Cameron was speechless when she showed him the wiggly object moving inside his eye at that point.

Victoria Lillabridge has been battling an enigmatic swelling in various regions of her body for three years; however, after seeing something sinister move inside her eye, she was unable to relax. Her doctor referred her to Dr. Robert Choi, an expert in infectious diseases, who thoroughly examined her skin and eyes. Dr. Robert Choi confirmed the presence of a parasitic infection, but the precise parasite had yet to be identified. To this end, additional tests, notably blood smears, were conducted.

A few weeks later, when the test results were in, they did find something in her blood that was consistent with a parasite. Loa Loa worm infestation was diagnosed in Victoria and on hearing her diagnosis, Victoria freaked out completely, she wished it wasn't true.

The loa loa, a parasitic round worm, moved about inside Victoria's body, penetrating her skin and muscle tissue, which caused swelling in her ankle, hands, and jaw, as well as an infection of her eye. The worms were physically crawling out of her flesh due to her extreme parasite infestation. When she coughed up an adult worm, according to Robert Choi, she experienced some strange symptoms. Victoria was terrified by the idea that worms might be devouring her alive, as well as horrified by the reality that they were crawling inside her body.

Cameron was really concerned hearing the word fatal, while Victoria was scared out of her mind with the diagnosis. After discovering Victoria Lillabrige had the Loa Loa parasite, Dr. Robert Choi started her on a specialized anti-parasitic drug. However, he was concerned that even this medication carried the risk of Victoria Lillabrige developing an inflammatory reaction as a result of the parasitic death and that this inflammatory reaction might even prove fatal. Victoria felt extremely helpless and as though she was in a lose-lose scenario no matter what. A week into her therapy, the parasites began to spread throughout her body. Victoria recalls being terrified when a rash in the shape of a worm appeared on her calf, but Dr. Choi convinced her that it was a dead worm that would eventually fall and disintegrate over the course of a few days.

The life cycle of the loa loa parasite, which is native to West and Central Africa, starts when an infected mammal is bitten by an African deer fly, which then ingests the worm's larvae. The larvae then travel to the fly's mouth, where they enter the blood of another mammal when it is bitten by the deer fly. The parasites then develop into adult worms and begin to reproduce inside the body of the bitten mammal.

Three years ago, Victoria traveled to central Africa with Cameron on a mission trip and recalls being eaten alive by insects and contracting a deer fly infection. She absolutely disregarded it at the moment and didn't give it much attention, but she never anticipated contracting this uncommon parasite while traveling to Africa.

And this is how Victoria Sutton, a woman from Seattle, ended up having worms crawl out of her flesh and developing this rare, fatal medical illness.

Stay tuned in for the upcoming batch of mind-boggling real life medical stories about rare and uncommon fatal illnesses, infections, and parasites.