Not all migraines are created equal. One teenager in China went to the hospital complaining of headaches and epilepsy and discovered the cause was a tapeworm that was living in his brain.
The parasite had been eating 19-year-old Wen Xiaoli's brain cells for two years and had grown to over four-inches. "It was alive; it was still moving inside the brain," surgeons say. "We had to remove it intact and couldn't risk breaking its body or else it would continue to survive inside." Doctors were able to remove the worm in two-minutes.
Wen believes he contracted the parasite while skinning a frog. "I cut my finger, and the larvae must have entered through the wound," he remembers. "No wonder my finger itched so much in the days that followed, but I didn’t think too much about it - how was I supposed to know that it was a worm?" Gross.