Worms In People’s Eyeballs Right Here In Boise Idaho

Is Thelazia gulosa hitting the Treasure Valley?  Let's start with what Thelazia gulosa is and who has it.  It's understandable if you don't know because the very first ever case of worms in a human being's eyeballs was just detected and it's making national news.  Thelazia gulosa is a type of eye worm usually seen in cattle in the northern U.S. and southern Canada areas but it's never before been seen in humans.  Never until now.

26-year-old Abby Beckley lives just across the border in Oregon and 14 worms were just pulled from her eyes.  According to FOX News Beckley had been horseback riding and fishing in Gold Beach, Oregon and started feeling some irritation in her eyes.  After dealing with this discomfort for a good week she worked her finger in there and ended up pulling out a worm that was about 1/2 of an inch long.

Beckley said...

“So I pulled my eye kind of down like this and I looked in that bottom little crevice and I was like something looks wrong, maybe I have a piece of fuzz stuck there.  So I went like this, in like a picking motion, and I felt something in between my fingers and I pulled it out and I looked at my finger and it was a moving worm.”

Pretty creepy right?  Beckley went to the doctor and the doctors proceeded to pull out 13 more worms.  They had never seen a case of this involving a human ever and it turns out there's no record of it ever happening to a human.

There are no more worms in Beckley's eyes and she's taken medication that would kill off any type of worms or parasites.  There's also no indication of this being contagious and / or spreading into the surrounding areas which means... Boise, we're o.k.