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Sometimes a common ailment isn't what it seems. Case in point: A Scottish woman named Daniela Liverani recently returned from a vacation in Asia with a persistent nosebleed. She thought it was from a motorcycle crash she'd been in on her trip. Then one day she tried to blow out what appeared to be dried blood in her nose. What she found instead will haunt you for days.
"I tried to blow it out and grab it, but I couldn't get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose," she later explained.
Wait -- HE retreated back up her nose? You mean this thing was ALIVE?!? Yes indeed. Doctors found athree-inch-long leech inside Liverani's nose. Can you EVEN handle finding out how long it had been there?
You guys, it was a month. That leech was living in the woman's nose for a MONTH.
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Are you ready to hear more? Because it gets worse. Sit down and take a deep breath before you keep reading. Liverani continues:
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, I jumped out of the shower to look really closely in the mirror and I saw ridges on him. That's when I realized he was an animal.
HORRORS. Let's stop here at this point and ponder how it must feel to shift from thinking you're blowing out some dried-up blood to realizing that you're actually dealing with a creature living inside your nose. OMGOMGOMG!!!!
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Off to the emergency room went Liverani, where doctors wrestled the leech out of her nose with both tweezers and forceps. If you are a glutton for punishment, you'll probably want to find out how exactly that feels. Ready?
It was agony -- whenever the doctor grabbed him, I could feel the leech tugging at the inside of my nose. Then all of a sudden, after half an hour, the pain stopped and the doctor had the leech in the tweezers.
He was as long as my forefinger and as fat as my thumb.
Poor Daniela. What an ordeal! And since leeches don't grow very quickly, it's not like it grew larger while in there -- it would have been that big to begin with. So here's a disturbing point medical expert Mark Siddal raises. "It's interesting that people don't feel these leeches going up their nose."
Okay, two things. One, this has happened to more than one person?!? And two, YEAH. How on Earth did she not notice this happening? Doctors think it might have happened while she was swimming or drinking water. But still -- I noticed the other day when a tiny gnat flew into my mouth while I was running through the park. (Ew.) Surely you would notice something as thick as your thumb going up your nose! Sneaky little critter.
Do you think you'd feel it if a leech swam up your nose?
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