Festering Brain Infection–Piercing the Illusion of Safety
She was young and wild, a bit of a rebel.
The 22-year-old woman’s body art announced that message as subtly as a billboard on a highway.
No stranger to illegal drugs, she had inhaled or injected the worst of them, including cocaine and heroin.
But recently she had turned a corner.
Last month she removed her new tongue piercing only two days after getting it, and she hadn’t injected any drugs for the last 5 months.
Ironic that after cleaning up her act she should now find herself stricken with a throbbing headache that was unfazed by aspirin.
Severe nausea, vomiting, and vertigo drove her to the hospital.
The results of an HIV test were negative. A neurological exam found mild ataxia (un-coordination) in her left leg, which she had already noticed.
This alerted her doctors to a potential problem in the right side of her brain in the region of motor co-ordination, called the cerebellum.
A CT scan and an MRI delivered the diagnoses with alarming clarity.
The woman was suffering from a festering brain abscess in her cerebellum.
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