Monsters Inside Me

MUSIC IN

HOST VO

A vicious creature is on the rampage.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

And I had a perfect little boy.  Something came into his body and destroyed vision in his eye.

HOST VO

A brutal killer invades a traveler’s blood.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

They said it was very, very critical that he get the medicine to act quickly.  Otherwise, you’re dead.

HOST VO

And a summer’s day at the lake becomes a nightmare when a ruthless monster attacks.

STEVE SELLARS VO/OC

It was horrible to see him just lay there and nothing you can do to help him.

HOST VO

Three completely different parasites where they all have the same strategy, to hijack the body of an unsuspecting host.  Anyone could be next.

HOST VO

Worms invisible to the human eye.  Insects thirsty for blood.  Microscopic amoeba.  They might look harmless but these are some of nature’s deadliest creatures.  They can hijack our bodies, disable our immune systems.  They are parasites.  But to those infected, they are the Monsters Inside Me.

HOST VO

Nature is a war zone, and parasites are the enemy.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

A parasite is just like any other organism.  It needs shelter.  It needs to reproduce.  But most of all, it needs food.  Parasites get into or onto another organism and that organism is called a host.  And they hijack that host to use them for their own needs.

HOST VO

Parasites have countless ways of hijacking their host’s bodies.  Some steal food from inside the gut.  Others lurk in the blood, sapping their host’s nutrients.  And some even target their host’s brains.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

Parasites are the ultimate hijackers and we’re their victims.

HOST VO

September, 1998, Massachusetts.  Christopher Durant is a bright four year old boy living with his parents and younger sister.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Oh, life’s great.  We’re all doing wonderfully.  The kids are great.  They’re healthy.  They’re having a fun time.  Life is just really, really good.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Chris just had his fourth birthday, and we always take the kids for well baby visits to the pediatrician on or around their birthdays.  And the pediatrician gave him a perfect bill of health, including 20 20 vision in both his eyes.

HOST VO

But Christopher’s life is about to change forever.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

My mother works at an optometrist, and she suggested that it would be good to bring Christopher and eventually his sister in for their first eye exam when they turned four.  We made the appointment and took him in to see the eye doctor.

HOST VO

Jennifer takes Christopher to the local optometrist, Dr. Milliken.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO

When Christopher first comes into the reception room, I’m expecting to find a completely, normal healthy child.  He hopped right up into the chair and we started to check his pupils and eye muscles.

HOST VO

First, Dr. Milliken covers Christopher’s left eye.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Then he has Christopher look at the pictures on the wall.  And so Chris says, “That’s a cake.  That’s an airplane.”

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN OC

And what picture is that?

JENNIFER DURANT VO

That’s a dog.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO/OC

Christopher did a very good job reading the eye chart with his right eye.  And then I asked Christopher to switch the cover to the other eye.  And it was very apparent that he just didn’t want to cover the left eye.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO/OC

So I reached up and I physically put that occluder right in front of his eye so that he can only see out of the left eye.  And as soon as he did, he just started looking around the room, almost like it was a mystery where the eye chart was.

HOST VO

When Christopher is asked to read the chart again, his strange behavior continues.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

I was sitting in a chair just a few feet away.  And Christopher looked at the cake and Christopher hesitated and then he said, “Book.”  So Dr. Milliken looks at me and we both knew that something was wrong.  And he went on to the next one which was an airplane and he said.

CHRISTOPHER DURANT VO

Fish.

JENNIFER DURANT OC/VO

And I knew that he wasn’t seeing what was on those pictures, and I was scared.  And I wanted to know what the problem was.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN OC

It was pretty apparent that Christopher just didn’t have any good central vision out of that left eye.

HOST VO

At first, Dr. Milliken is not overly concerned.  

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN OC

The vast majority of times that I see this, it’s a very treatable condition.  It’s a condition called Amblyopia.  

HOST VO

Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, is a developmental problem which can usually be treated by covering the good eye to help retrain the lazy one.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO

Amblyopia is a condition where the eye just hasn’t learned to see.  For some reason where there’s a big difference between the two eyes, the brain will only use the image of the better seeing eye.  So I’m hopeful at this point that Christopher would do very well with Amblyopia therapy.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO

But after taking a closer look, Dr. Milliken realizes the situation is worse than he thought.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

Dr. Milliken looked directly into his eye and he sort of gave an imperceptible nod.

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN VO/OC

There’s a raised swollen pigmented lesion right in the back of his eye which is where central vision is.  Once I saw the scar, I was aware that Christopher did not have Amblyopia.  It was a lesion that was quite possibly not treatable.  The retina has been injured and the retina doesn’t grow back.  At this point, I realized that Christopher will only have vision in one eye.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

I was wondering what did I miss?  How did I not know that he can’t see out of a large portion of his left eye?  How could I have possibly as his mother have missed that?  It was an overwhelming feeling that I had let him down in some way.

HOST VO

Dr. Milliken doesn’t know what caused Christopher’s eye damage, so he refers him to a pediatric ophthalmologist.  

DR. DAVID MILLIKEN OC

I’ve never seen anything as this significant and it really does require a specialist at this point.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

We walk into the specialist’s office and meet the resident, and she brings us back into the room and puts some drops in Chris’ eyes.  And then we go back out to sit in the waiting room for about 20 minutes so those drops can take effect.

HOST VO

The drops dilate Christopher’s eyes allowing the specialist to take a closer look at his retina.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

We went back in, and with his head lamp on, the specialist looks into Chris’ eyes and kind of moves back and forth trying to get a deep look in his eyes.  And when he finishes, he looks up at me and he says, “Chris has Toxocariasis.”  

HOST VO

Toxocariasis is a disease caused by a parasite.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

And I had a perfect little boy, and something came into his body and destroyed vision in his eye.  And I, I’ve never been that angry in my life.

HOST VO

Toxocara is a parasitic worm.  When the eggs enter the human body, they hatch into larvae in the intestine.  The larvae travel through the body in the blood, attacking the body’s tissues.  The body’s immune system fights and kills the parasite, causing inflammation in the affected tissues.  This isn’t usually a problem.  But if by chance the parasite reaches the eye, the inflammation can damage the retina.  And the result is blindness.

HOST VO

The damage done by the parasite is irreversible.  Christopher may never see out of his left eye again.  But he might not be the only one in his family to be affected.  To get from host to host, the parasite employs a cunning strategy.

DAN RISKIN VO

The Toxocara parasite hijacks an organism you would never expect to hurt you, the family pet.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

I learned that Toxocariasis comes from the ingestion of roundworm which primarily comes from dogs.  Once I found out it was from dogs, I immediately looked to our black Lab.  

HOST VO

If the Durant’s dog is infected, the entire family could be at risk.

JENNIFER DURANT VO

I was really conflicted with our dogs.  How do I get rid of a family member?

HOST VO

Four year old Christopher Durant has been attacked by the sight stealing parasite, Toxocara, leaving him blind in one eye.  Dogs are the main transmitters of the Toxocara parasite making the family’s pet Labrador the prime suspect.

DAN RISKIN OC/VO

Toxocara is adapted to live inside the digestive system of a puppy.  And it hijacks that digestive system to get all of its nutrients.  So when the puppy eats, Toxocaras would get first crack at all those nutrients.

HOST VO

Larvae are transmitted to puppies via their mother’s milk.  Once in the intestine, they penetrate the gut wall and circulate around the puppy’s body.  When the larvae become adults, they lay eggs in the intestine which are passed in the feces.  If the eggs are eaten by another dog, the lifecycle continues.

HOST VO

Dogs are not usually harmed by the parasite.  But if the parasitic eggs are eaten by a human, it’s a different story.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

When the Toxocara parasite is inside a puppy, it does very well and it just stays there eating the food that the puppy delivers to it.  But if it gets inside the digestive system of a different kind of organism, it doesn’t do quite as well.  And so then it spreads out in through the tissues in search of food.  And that’s when the real trouble starts.  Because when those larvae move through the tissues, they can cause a lot of damage.

HOST VO

In Chris’ case, the parasite made it to his right eye, damaging it beyond repair.  But was the Durant’s black Lab to blame?

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

I immediately said is there any chance at all that this problem with Chris’ eye, the roundworm, could have come from our dogs?

HOST VO

Dog worming medicine is designed to kill the parasite.  But if a dog isn’t wormed regularly, it has a high chance of carrying the parasite.  Jennifer scours her black Lab’s veterinary records.  

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

They had been de-wormed so it definitely wasn’t our dogs.

HOST VO

Because the family dog has been wormed regularly throughout its life, there’s no chance it could be hosting the parasite.  So how Christopher became infected is still a mystery.

HOST VO

One man who’s spent his career studying how the Toxocara parasite spreads is Dr. Kevin Kazacos, a Parasitologist at Purdue University.

HOST VO

By repeating a classic experiment, he can reveal just how common the parasite is in the environment.  Over the course of a week, he allows two unwormed puppies to defecate in a defined area.  At the end of the week, he collects the samples of the puppy’s fecal matter.

DR. KEVIN KAZACOS VO/OC

Okay, we got our samples now.  And now we’re going to take these samples back to the lab and, and do our testing on them.

DR. KEVIN KAZACOS VO

So we have 93 eggs on the count, so we would multiply that by 100.  And that would mean it has 9,300 eggs per gram of feces.  It’s not unusual to find Toxocara puppies shedding a 100,000 eggs per gram of feces or more.

HOST VO

Using the data from the experiment, Dr. Kazacos comes to some shocking conclusions.

DR. KEVIN KAZACOS VO/OC

In, in simply one week with those two puppies, we estimated that they shed 20 and a half million eggs into the soil.

HOST VO

Millions of these parasites are lurking in the soil waiting to hijack their next host which could be a dog or a person.

DR. KEVIN KAZACOS VO/OC

A national survey done not to long ago looked at over 6,000 dogs from all over the country.  And they found 15 percent of them were infected with Toxocara.  And if you looked at puppies, you might be up over 80 percent or higher.

HOST VO

Armed with this information, Jennifer develops her own theory as to how Chris contracted the Toxocara parasite.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Chris must have been in a sandbox somewhere and put some dirt in his mouth and eaten it and gotten roundworm from it.

HOST VO

The Durants may never know for sure when or how the parasite entered their son’s body.  But they can never forget how his immune system’s fight against the hijacker left Chris blind in one eye.

HOST VO

To make sure that Chris’ immune system did kill all the larvae, they take their son to have his blood analyzed.  The results come back negative.  The Toxocara parasite is dead.

JENNIFER DURANT OC

I’m really relieved to know that the Toxocara is gone from his system.

HOST VO

Chris is now 11 and free from the parasite that invaded his eye.

CHRISTOPHER DURANT VO/OC

To me when I close my right eye, I can see the basic outline of things and I can see the main color.  But I can’t get in the details.  I might not be able to do what I have been hoping to do which is join the military because you need both your eyes, and I might not be able to do that.  And other than that it hasn’t affected me at all.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Chris and I together are taking this parasite on.  We want to spread the word however we can to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else’s child.

HOST VO

Chris and Jennifer have taken their campaign nationwide, spreading the word about the importance of worming pet dogs.

JENNIFER DURANT VO/OC

Even having had Toxocariasis, Chris is a happy great kid.  He’s having a wonderful life.

HOST VO

The Toxocara parasite lives in the soil all around us.  But there are some simple ways to avoid contracting it.  Make sure small children don’t put dirt or soil in their mouths.  And always wash hands after playing or working outside.

HOST VO

For Toxocara, finding the right host is the key factor in whether the parasite will thrive.

DAN RISKIN VO

Some parasites benefit by keeping their host alive as long as possible.  Toxocara is a successful parasite because it hijacks the digestive system of its host and eats its host’s food.  Other parasites aren’t quite so nice, and they have no problem just tearing through an organism and moving on.  They can hijack the body and kill in a matter of days.

HOST VO

Florida, July, 2007.  A deadly hijacker is on the loose.  It’s claimed 175 victims worldwide.  Now the lives of one Orlando family are about to be shattered.  Steve Sellars is worried about his 11 year old son, Will.

STEVE SELLARS VO/OC

He was dizzy and falling over, falling off the couch.  His eyes were flickering in his head.  He was very disoriented.  I knew at this time we got to get him to the hospital as soon as possible because he was very sick.

HOST VO

Half an hour later, Will’s mom, Peggy, arrives at the hospital.  She is shocked by her son’s condition.

PEGGY VOGHT VO

When I went into the emergency room, Will couldn’t see me.  He, he didn’t recognize me.  I was trying to talk to him to calm him down because he didn’t understand what was going on.

HOST VO

What the family doesn’t know is that Will is being eaten alive from the inside.

HOST VO

The Toxocara parasite can lead to blindness in humans.  What is the best way to stop the parasite from spreading?  A, always cook meat thoroughly.  B, worm your dog regularly.  C, only drink bottled water.

HOST VO

The best way to stop the Toxocara parasite from spreading is to worm your dog regularly.  Toxocara is transmitted through the feces of unwormed dogs.  An infected dog can pass thousands of parasitic eggs each time it defecates.

HOST VO

In Orlando, Florida, 11 year old Will Sellars is in the hospital fighting for his life.  His symptoms are terrifying.

STEVE SELLARS VO

He was dizzy.  He was falling over.  He didn’t seem to know where he was at.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

I was so scared because he looked at me and he didn’t recognize me.

HOST VO

But the doctors have no idea what the cause is.

HOST VO

For Will’s parents, the nightmare began one week earlier.

PEGGY VOGHT VO

He was playing his skateboard game on his X-Box and I was on the couch watching him.  And he was struggling to get past a part that he normally had no problem getting past it.  And he was getting frustrated, and I just figured he was tired.

HOST VO

Later that evening, Will notices something strange.

PEGGY VOGHT VO

He did complain of a bad headache Friday afternoon right before football practice.  He went home with his dad and from there he was supposed to stay for the rest of the weekend.

STEVE SELLARS VO

Saturday night was when he started throwing up.  He was complaining of headache, stomachache.  So I gave him some medicine.  Monday morning, he was dizzy.  He was falling over.  He didn’t seem to know where he was at.

HOST VO

Alarmed by his son’s deteriorating condition, Steve takes Will to the emergency room.

STEVE SELLARS VO

It was a very scary moment.  We didn’t know what was going on.

PEGGY VOGHT OC/VO

I just remember driving down the highway not really knowing what was going to happen.

HOST VO

And by the time she gets to the emergency room, Peggy’s fears are confirmed.  Dr. Tilelli is the emergency doctor on call.

DR. JOHN TILELLI VO

A CT Scan shows that his brain is very, very severely swollen.  The first impression is that he has meningitis.

HOST VO

But when the doctors examine Will’s spinal fluid, they make a frightening discovery.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

They actually drained some fluid from his brain, and that’s when the lab technician saw the amoeba.

HOST VO

There is something alive in Will’s spinal fluid.

DR. JOHN TILELLI VO/OC

Our worst suspicions confirmed he has a severe parasitic meningitis.

HOST VO

Will has been infected by a deadly single celled parasite, dubbed the “brain eating amoeba.”

DAN RISKIN OC/VO

If you get infected with the brain eating amoeba, you’re in big trouble.  This parasite is an out and out killer.

HOST VO

But while its actions often have deadly consequences, the amoeba hijacks the brain for a benign reason, to find food and shelter.

DAN RISKIN OC

Inside the brain, the amoeba has the perfect environment to feed and reproduce.  You have food, heat, moisture.  It’s perfect for them to live their lives.

HOST VO

But by living their lives, these parasites endanger ours.  Only by understanding how the amoeba kills can doctors hope to save Will’s life.

HOST VO

At Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Francine Cabral is studying how the amoeba feeds.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

It’s very efficient in its mechanism of killing.  It divides rapidly and it moves rapidly.

HOST VO

To witness their destructive feeding, she places the amoeba on human nerve cells.  Seeing the amoeba feed shows it to be a formidable adversary.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

It, it’s quite incredible to watch the amoeba feeding in action.

HOST VO

The amoeba has a two pronged attack.  First, it hijacks the host’s cells using special feet called pseudopods.  Then, the amoeba cuts a hole in the cell wall.  And when the contents of the cell leak out, the amoeba eats them.  Not only are the amoeba ruthless killers, they also have a cunning method of evading the body’s immune system.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL OC/VO

The amoeba can defend itself by forming a coat which is called a cyst.  And this coat surrounds the amoeba and is impervious to the host’s immune system.

HOST VO

When the body’s white blood cells attack, the amoeba forms its protective coat.  The white blood cells latch onto the coat but can’t get through.  Then the amoeba sheds the coat and escapes unharmed, leaving the white blood cells behind.

HOST VO

In Orlando, Will Sellars is in mortal danger.  His chances of survival are slim.

PEGGY VOGHT VO

Dr. Tilelli was very honest and said that the chances were not good.

STEVE SELLARS VO

They told us that he had a ten percent chance of survival but they were going to do everything they possibly could to save his life.

HOST VO

As the amoeba rages unchecked in Will’s brain, his immune system works overtime to combat the infection causing his brain to swell.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

What happens is that when the amoeba gets into the brain, in a sense it’s holding the brain hostage.  So when the body sends in its immune system to try to diffuse the hostage situation, often it does even more damage as a result.

DR. JOHN TILELLI VO

The problems with infections of the nervous system are two fold.  One is that the organism itself causes damage.  But that in the course of fighting the infection, the body causes inflammation.  The brain becomes swollen and it no longer has room to survive in the, in the contents of the skull.  If we stood any chance, now would be the time to act.

HOST VO

To kill the amoeba, the doctors give Will antibiotics.  And to control the swelling, they give him steroids.  But when they don’t help, Will’s chances of survival grow dimmer.

DR. JOHN TILELLI VO/OC

If one looks at the cases of amoebic meningitis, one will see that the numbers of survivors are in the single digits.

HOST VO

Though Will’s parents are praying for the best, the severity of the situation begins to dawn on them.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

I just remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening.”  I knew things were bad.

HOST VO

11 year old Will Sellars from Orlando, Florida lies in a coma.  He is suffering from a rare parasitic infection, amoebic meningitis.  His brain is being eaten alive by a deadly amoeba.  As Will’s brain swells uncontrollably, his mother, Peggy, becomes desperate.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

I wanted them to do everything they could.  And they did.  They never gave up.

HOST VO

While doctors battle to save Will’s life, another team of scientists are trying to track down the source of the infection.

HOST VO

In Virginia, Dr. Cabral thinks a clue could lie in the amoeba’s lifecycle.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

The amoeba likes freshwater, ponds, lakes where bacteria are abundant because that’s its food source.

DAN RISKIN VO

It’s important to note that some parasites can’t live unless they have a host.  Other parasites are free living most of the time but will take advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself.  And the brain eating amoeba is a perfect example of this.

HOST VO

The amoeba lives in a cyst in sediment on the bottom of lakes.  As the water warms, the amoeba emerges from the cyst and begins to divide.  At this stage, the amoeba can infect humans.  When conditions become unfavorable, the amoeba forms a cyst again and the lifecycle repeats.

HOST VO

Dr. Cabral and her colleagues collect samples from lakes across the US.  One of the lakes they test is near Will Sellars’ home, Lake Jessamine.  It’s a dangerous job.  The water could be harboring the amoeba.  The samples are sent back to Cabral’s lab for analysis.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

We have collected some surface water samples.  In addition to surface water, we’ve also collected sediment samples.  And we’re going to test this water to determine whether there are amoebae present.

HOST VO

The samples are placed on a Petri dish coated with bacteria.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

If there are few amoeba in the water, they will start to eat the bacteria and then they’ll divide and we’ll be able to detect it.

HOST VO

The test is positive.

HOST VO

The lake near Will Sellars’ house contains the deadly parasite.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

I had a feeling it was water related, and I pinpointed when it happened because he played down at the lake.

HOST VO

It’s now clear how Will became infected.  A week before he’s rushed to the hospital, Will was on Lake Jessamine.

PEGGY VOGHT VO

One of Williams’ friends called and asked if he could come over and go wakeboarding.  And he was so excited because he hadn’t actually wakeboarded yet.  He wanted to.

HOST VO

He spends the whole afternoon wakeboarding on the lake.  But when he falls in, the water forces its way up Will’s nostrils carrying the deadly amoeba with it.  The amoeba attach to the nerve endings inside his nostrils and crawl up to the brain.  In the hospital, Will is fighting for his life.

MUSIC OUT

PEGGY VOGHT VO

Each hour…

MUSIC IN

…that went by, you know, his organs were shutting down.  And we made the decision that if he did go into cardiac arrest that we wouldn’t revive him.

HOST VO

At three o’clock in the afternoon on July 17th, ten days after going wakeboarding on Lake Jessamine, Will Sellars passes away.

STEVE SELLARS VO

To see your child die right before your eyes in a hospital bed is, it’s like a nightmare.  And it was horrible to see him just lay there and nothing you can do to help him.

HOST VO

Since losing her son, Will’s mom, Peggy, has dedicated her life to preventing future tragedies.

PEGGY VOGHT VO/OC

Although it is rare, it is real.  And trying to help other families is the way I keep Will in my life is my driving force.

DAN RISKIN VO

Most amoeba don’t hurt people at all.  And in fact the brain eating amoeba usually doesn’t infect people.  There have only been about 200 reported cases of people getting infected by it.  So for the parasite getting inside a human is bad news too, because it’s a dead end.

HOST VO

When Will died, the amoeba were trapped in his brain and would eventually die as well.

HOST VO

11 year old Will Sellars only had to go to a lake behind his house to come in contact with a brain eating amoeba.  Cabral’s research indicates that as many as 70 percent of America’s lakes may harbor the parasite.  But because they exist in such small numbers, infections are very rare.  But the danger is always there.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO/OC

Are we looking at an outbreak?  It’s possible that as the water warms up, the amoeba have a chance to divide.  And there would be greater numbers of amoeba in the water.

HOST VO

And even in warm water, some simple measures can protect swimmers.

DR. FRANCINE MARCIANO-CABRAL VO

The way to prevent deaths from occurring, first of all, is to educate the public about this disease.  And secondly, it would be very important to wear nose plugs when doing recreational activities such as diving or wakeboarding where you’re underwater quite a bit.

HOST VO

For the amoeba being in the right place at the right time is all it needs to find its way into a new host.  But some hijackers don’t wait around.  They take a more proactive approach.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

For parasites, one of the big problems they face is how to get to their host.  And some parasites have a brilliant solution.  They hijack an animal that they can use to get to their host.

HOST VO

For these parasites, hijacking an intermediate host, like an animal or insect is a vital step to their ultimate goal, finding a human host.

HOST VO

At Michigan State University Medical Center, Dwight Scott is about to undergo an urgent procedure to analyze his spinal fluid.

FEMALE TECHNICIAN WITH SHORT HAIR VO

Come on in.

MALE PHYSICIAN WEARING GLASSES VO

I didn’t think I’d see you back.  Have a seat up here.

FEMALE TECHNICIAN WITH SHORT HAIR VO/OC

Have a seat.

MALE PHYSICIAN WEARING GLASSES VO

Here, step up on this and sit down.

HOST VO

Dwight has a deadly parasite, one so rare that he is the only known case in the United States.

DWIGHT SCOTT OC/VO

I guess it’s kind of an exclusive club, but it’s not the kind of club you’d normally want to be in, I’m afraid.

MALE PHYSICIAN WEARING GLASSES VO/OC

Do you have any questions?  I guess you’re still a little nervous.

FEMALE TECHNICIAN WITH SHORT HAIR VO

Yeah.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

Well I don’t like the idea of it.

MALE PHYSICIAN WEARING GLASSES  OC

Yeah, I know.

FEMALE TECHNICIAN WITH SHORT HAIR VO

No, nobody does.

MALE PHYSICIAN WEARING GLASSES VO

Well why don’t you go on out?

HOST VO

His tests will tell Dwight and his doctors whether the deadly parasite has advanced to his brain.  But it’s a delicate procedure and everything hinges on the results.

HOST VO

His wife, Cindy, can only hope for the best.

CINDY SCOTT VO/OC

If the parasite goes to the brain, as I understand it, it is pretty much a death sentence.

HOST VO

Dwight Scott’s nightmare began almost four months ago.  At 55, he was enjoying an active life full of travel and adventure.

CINDY SCOTT VO/OC

Dwight’s always had incredibly high energy.  And he has 17 projects going at once.

HOST VO

As an expert gunsmith, Dwight’s profession took him on hunting trips around the world.  He was used to both the rewards and inconveniences of exotic travel.  So when a client invited him on a safari in Tanzania, Dwight didn’t hesitate to join him.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

I’ve been to Africa 11 times.  We were there three and a half months ago, and I was there for a little over three weeks.

HOST VO

But two weeks into the trip, Dwight suddenly starts to feel unwell.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

I just started to feel very, very weak.  One day you wake up and you’re just, you’re so weak that you can’t hardly get out of bed.

HOST VO

He consults with the camp nurse who thinks he’s having a bad reaction to the anti-malarial drugs he’s been taking.  On her advice, he stops the medications right away.

DWIGHT SCOTT OC/VO

And then over the next couple of days, I just got weaker and weaker and weaker until I was so weak I couldn’t stand on my own.

HOST VO

Dwight’s traveling companions realized that something is seriously wrong.  They arrange to fly him out of the camp to a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya to get help.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

I was pleading with them not to take me to the hospital.  Let me go home.  And they said, “They’re not going to let you on the plane.”  So they put me in an ambulance and they took me to a hospital.

HOST VO

When he arrives at Nairobi General Hospital, Dwight is too weak to eat or drink.  And he’s just beginning to experience a frightening new symptom.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

I was delusional.  And it got to the point where at one time I thought that they had a monkey in the next room.  And it was making so much noise I thought they were going to kill it.  It seemed so real to me at the time.  But afterwards, I had it explained to me that that wasn’t possible that they were killing monkeys in the ICU unit at the Nairobi General.

HOST VO

The Kenyan doctors recognized these bizarre symptoms, and they asked Dwight if he’s been bitten by any insects recently.  Looking back, he does remember one particular bite.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

I’ve been bitten probably a thousand or more times.  But in this particular case, I, I got a bad one.

HOST VO

It’s the clue they need to make the diagnosis.  The doctors tell him they know what is causing his symptoms.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

I was fortunate that they had seen two cases of this in the last 20 years, so they diagnosed the problem within about the first hour of being there.

HOST VO

And what’s astounding is that the illness that has Dwight fighting for his life started with a simple fly bite.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

Africa’s a big place.  And there’s different animals and there are different pests in different places.  But in Tanzania, you have the tsetse flies.  They are about the size of a housefly and normally a little bit bigger.  But they’re just extremely aggressive and you just hate to have them pestering you all day long.

HOST VO

But the tsetse fly that bite Dwight wasn’t just a nuisance.  It was infected with a deadly parasite, a single cell killer called Trypanosoma  And when the fly bit him, these parasites flooded into Dwight’s bloodstream.  Inside his body, these cunning intruders began to divide and elongate.  They used their long tails called flagellum to swim throughout his bloodstream.  The result is a severe case of Trypanosomiasis or African Sleeping Sickness.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

The Trypanosome needs to get to its next victim, and what better way to do that than to hitch a ride inside the body of a fly that feeds on blood.

HOST VO

Dwight’s immune system is helpless to stop the microscopic assassins.  Each individual Trypanosoma parasite is armed with a shield of proteins.  In the bloodstream, white blood cells recognize these proteins as foreign and they build up antibodies that attack the proteins.  But Trypanosomes can actually change their protein coat of armor rendering the blood’s antibodies useless.  This leaves them free to reproduce and devastate the body’s red blood cells, the very cells that carry nutrients and oxygen throughout the body.  Starved of nutrients, the patient goes into a coma and ultimately dies.

DAN RISKIN OC/VO

What the Trypanosomes do is to literally feed off the glucose that you’re supposed to be sending to your cells so that your body is not getting as much energy as it needs and that’s what makes you sleepy.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

They told me that I was about 24 hours from being gone, you know, being dead.

HOST VO

Doctors immediately start Dwight on drugs they hope will save his life.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

I got my first shot of medicine that evening.  They said it was very, very critical that you get the medicine that quickly, otherwise you’re dead.

HOST VO

This lifesaving medication is called Suramin, made only in Africa.  The drug is designed not only to immediately kill the Trypanosoma parasite, but to linger in the body as protection against the parasite’s offspring.

HOST VO

After two weeks in Intensive Care, Dwight recovers enough to fly home to his wife and family in Michigan.

CINDY SCOTT VO

When I went to the airport to pick him up, he looked 20 years older and he had lost probably 20 pounds and was absolutely and completely exhausted.

HOST VO

In spite of the Suramin treatment, back home Dwight’s symptoms persist.

CINDY SCOTT VO

We drove home and he went to bed.  And that’s pretty much where he stayed for a good while.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

You are really, really weak.  It’s an all out effort just to get up and walk across the room or you know try to get something to eat.

HOST VO

Dwight’s symptoms are a warning sign that despite the medication he was given in Africa, the Trypanosomes may still be lurking inside him.  And if the killer parasite has crossed into Dwight’s brain, the next stage is coma.

HOST VO

A deadly parasite has hijacked a tsetse fly and infected Dwight Scott with African Sleeping Sickness, a potentially fatal condition.  Dwight’s doctors need to determine whether or not his infection has reached a critical stage and crossed into his brain.  Dr. Apoorv Kalra heads the team of physicians in charge of Dwight’s care.

DR. APOORV KALRA VO

Sleeping Sickness clinically presents in two stages.  The first stage is where the parasite is just limited to the blood.  And the second stage is when the parasite crosses over to the brain.

DAN RISKIN OC

In the second stage, the parasite actually makes its way into the central nervous system and that can be deadly.

HOST VO

It’s possible the Suramin Dwight received in Africa was administered too late to fend off the parasitic hijackers.

DR. APOORV KALRA VO/OC

You want to be sure in these patients there is no parasite in the brain.

HOST VO

Dwight’s medical team is in a race against the clock to diagnose and treat him.  There’s only one way to determine whether the parasite is in his brain.  And that’s by performing a spinal tap.  This is a delicate procedure where a doctor will insert a four inch long needle into Dwight’s spine.  They need to extract a sample of spinal fluid, the liquid that cushions the spine and brain.  Three vials of Dwight’s spinal fluid are sent to the lab for immediate analysis.

HOST VO

The next morning the results come back.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO/OC

I’m a little bit nervous.  If it goes to your brain, it’s very, very serious, and you will, that’s what you normally die from.

HOST VO

Finally, Dr. Kalra arrives with the news.

DR. APOORV KALRA VO/OC

So Mr. Scott, we do have the results now and they show that your cells are normal in the CSS.

HOST VO

The test has come back negative.  But Dwight will have to repeat the test every six months for the next two years to be sure he’s clear.

DWIGHT SCOTT VO

Now I’m probably back to about 70 percent or 80 percent of normal.  The doctors say that I should be back to full strength at some point, but they can’t really tell me quite when.  As for going back to Africa again after this, I don’t know.  One thing I would like to say is that the care I got in Africa, I thought was just excellent.  Certainly, I wouldn’t be here today had they not been as efficient as they, they were.

HOST VO

Parasites live in every country, in every climate in every corner of the world lying, waiting, ready to hijack an unsuspecting host.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

Parasites are the ultimate hijackers, and they’re found in or on every kind of organism on the planet.  They steal their host’s nutrients.  They breed inside them.  And in some cases, they destroy them.

HOST VO

And avoiding them is impossible.

DAN RISKIN VO/OC

They survive because they’re able to adapt to live off of almost every type of organism.  They were here before us and they’ll be here long after we’re gone.  For as long as there’s life on this planet, chances are there will always be parasites.