After weeks of nosebleeds, a British backpacker discovered that a 7.63cm leech had been living in her nose for more than a month.
Daniela Liverani of Glasgow, Scotland, told the Sunday Mail that she initially chalked up the issue to a motorbike accident before realizing that there was an animal living in her nose:
"After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril. I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds.
"I tried to blow him out and grab him but I couldn't get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose.
"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 realised he was an animal.”
Once she made the discovery Liverani was rushed to Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary where doctors removed the leech with forceps and tweezers.
Mark Siddal, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and an expert on leeches, said:
"Daniela could have picked up this leech from water in Vietnam, if she had been swimming.
"Or it could have gone in through her mouth, as she was drinking water.
"Even though it was there for around a month, these leeches don't grow all that quickly, so it wouldn't have been much smaller when it went up there. It would have been quite sizeable.
"It's interesting that people don't feel these leeches go up their nose."
We won’t be swimming in any lakes or rivers for a while…
