From eye worms to nose weed, medical researchers have had some unique situations on their hands lately

[View this email in your browser]( [Open Ars Technica in your browser]( [Image] [Catalina, an island off the coast of California and the new MacOS release name.]( Be forewarned, you do not have to click through to any of these stories. But throughout the early portions of the fall, we can't help but notice that the amount of eye-popping (not literally but almost) health stories seem to be spiking. A man in Panama had a [massive, rotting scrotum removed]( after avoiding doctors for decades. Another man kept getting drunk whenever he ate carbs because [his stomach contained brewer's yeast unexpectedly](. And cases of [decorative contacts going bad]( proved to be way, way more horrific than anything else you'd find on Halloween. So for this week's Orbital Transmission, we're highlighting some of the rarest, most jaw-dropping medical happenings we've come across this fall. Those [vaping issues]( (rightfully) took up most of the headlines given the amount of people impacted, but these situations are no less scary or awe-inspiring to medical researchers. —[@NathanMattise]( Orbital Transmission 11.13.2019 [(image) ]( [For the second time in history, parasitic cattle worms found the human eye]( The journal Clinical Infectious Diseases provided everyone a bit of nightmare fuel recently: A 68-year-old Nebraska woman has become the second human in history to discover parasitic cattle worms wriggling around her eyeballs. (The first reported case happened two years ago in Oregon, by the way.) The CDC noted this worm—Thelazia gulosa, aka the cattle eye worm—has been in the US since the 1940s. "The reasons for this species only now infecting humans remain obscure," they write. But "[t]hat a second human infection with T. gulosa has occurred within two years of the first suggest that this may represent an emerging zoonotic disease in the United States." The woman believes she may have encountered this worm while trail running, as she soon found her eyes unusually irritated. The CDC currently has no recommendations beyond calling for a monitoring of these infections in cows as well as humans. [(image) ]( [This man thought he swallowed some marijuana—it was stuck in his nose for 18 years]( Nothing to sneeze at: Doctors excavated a 19mm×11mm rock-hard mass from a man's nose. It turned out to be the calcified remains of a small amount of marijuana he once tried to smuggle into prison a startling 18 years earlier. The man's nose stone—reported this month in the journal BMJ Case Reports—is a rare example of illicit drugs causing a rhinolith, which are rare on their own. Rhinoliths are stone-like concretions formed by the gradual buildup of salts around things not normally found in the nose. Through the years, the man suffered recurrent sinus infections and had trouble breathing out of the right side of his nose. [(image) ]( [A legion of liver fluke parasites invaded this man’s innards—and there’s video]( Typically, the only type of worms we recommend finding are "gummy." But recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in California reported a case where they found a throng of flatworm parasites overrunning a man's innards—and they happened to catch the whole thing on video. The doctors eventually extracted some of the worms and identified them as the common liver fluke Fasciola hepatica. These are—as the name suggests—common flatworm parasites that typically infect domestic and wild ruminants, often sheep. The man had reported recently working on a farm and eating watercress, and his symptoms had initially looked like extended fatigue. [(image) ]( [For positive rare medical happenings: The first complex penis transplant seems successful]( More than a year after undergoing a 14-hour operation to transplant a penis, scrotum, and lower abdominal wall, a severely injured veteran reports in the New England Medical Journal that he has regained normal sensation and function of his new body parts (including but not limited to: the ability to urinate while standing, orgasms, erections, and general sensitivity). The man—who wished to remain anonymous—was the first to undergo such a complex genital transplant and only the third in the world to have a successful penis transplant (a fourth has since been carried out). The transplant repaired a traumatic injury from an improvised explosive device (IED), which destroyed the man’s penis and scrotum and caused substantial tissue loss in his lower abdominal wall. It also led to above-knee amputations of both his legs. [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2019 Condé Nast, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Condé Nast One World Trade Center New York, NY 10007 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences](newsletter=ars) or [unsubscribe from this list](newsletter=ars).