A 68 - year - old woman from Nebraska commence to feel an irritation in her right eye back in March 2018 . Upon flush it with tap piddle , she found she had dislodged a moving roundworm about half an inch ( 1.3 centimeters ) in length .

seem closer at her eye , she noticed a second move worm , which she also take out by blush it with water .   She survive to see an ophthalmologist the following daylight , and a third worm was bump within her eye and removed . It seems there was quite the party fit on in there . The   ophthalmologist advised the patient   – who was staying in Monterey County , California , at the prison term   – to continue to flush the eye with water and manually excerpt the worms whenever she discover them . Just the advice you require to pick up .

The patient , who doctors write about in the journalClinical infective Diseases , was also given ointment to preclude bacterial infection and sent away . However , after returning home to Nebraska , she remain to feel irritation and a " foreign consistency whizz " in both of her center and once again sought medical advice . After removing a fourth worm and continuing a new course of treatment , she finally was worm - free .

So far , so gross . What ’s really horrifying about this character , however , is how she got the worms in the first blank space . She   may have pick up the parasites after she only run through a swarm of flies .

" The patient is a track moon curser and remember in early February 2018 , rounding a niche on a steep trail in a Carmel Valley regional park and running into a horde of small tent-fly , " the authorswrite in the case report .

" She recalls swat the flies from her face and spit out them out of her oral cavity " .

A sampling of the worms send off for depth psychology was identify asThelazia gulosa(cattle eyeworm ) .

" The louse was identified as an grownup femaleT. gulosa , " the author write . forged : " ballock containing highly-developed larvae were observed in utero , indicating that man are suitable hosts for the replica ofT. gulosa . "

This is only the second sentence that the   leech has been found in humans , the source from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ’s epenthetic division drop a line in the report . Thefirst case was reported in February 2018 , involving a woman who force 12 of the leech from her heart .

The authors are unsure why the species is now infecting humans ,   as it ’s unremarkably impart between cattle by flies . They speculate it could be due to an increasing preponderance of the sponge in domestic cattle .