A woman spent about a year with a 15cm worm living under her skin.
Anna Aleshkovka became “home” to a parasite called Dirofilaria when she was a teenager.
Although her ordeal began a decade ago, Anna shared her story with Russian media earlier this month (May) following reports of a rise in dirofilariasis cases in the Moscow region.
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Anna believes she picked up the parasite during a family holiday to Sochi at the age of 16 after being bitten by a mosquito.
She said: “They carry Dirofilaria larvae on their proboscis. First they bit a dog or a cat, then they bit me – and that was it.”
Two months after returning home to Siberia, she began feeling something strange beneath the skin on the left side of her face.
Anna said: “At first I felt slight movements. I’d wake up in the morning with a bit of swelling. Well, I thought maybe I’d just slept awkwardly.
“I was doing athletics at the time and competing at a high national level. I thought, ‘My muscles are overworked, I just need some rest.’”
But rest did not help – the swelling worsened and the movements became more noticeable.
Later, Anna realised whatever was inside her was moving around – travelling from her forehead down to her cheek.
Over the following months, she made repeated hospital visits while the worm continued to grow.
Doctors initially suspected wisdom teeth problems. Later, a neurologist diagnosed her with trigeminal neuralgia – a condition causing sudden, severe facial pain.
Another doctor, after hearing her describe the sensation of something moving in her face, told her: “Girl, you’re mentally ill, you’ve got problems in your head.”
The ordeal left Anna constantly exhausted and even forced her to miss school.
When bright red patches began appearing on her cheek, dermatologists dismissed them as acne.
The turning point finally came in summer 2017.
Anna was with a friend when her left eyelid suddenly became heavy and her eye almost closed.
She recalled: “My friend pulled my eyebrow up with her finger and screamed, ‘Anya, something’s moving in there!’”
She rushed home, where her father examined her face using his phone torch before telling her: “Anya, you’ve got a worm in there!”
An ambulance took Anna to a hospital in Irkutsk, where doctors confirmed the diagnosis.
Three surgeons removed the parasite the following day through a small incision near her eyebrow.
Anna said: “I spent another 24 hours living with the parasite in my eyelid, holding it in place with my hand so it wouldn’t crawl away and hide.
“The harder I pressed on it, the more it seemed to fight back. I didn’t sleep at all that night.”
The worm measured 15cm (six inches) long, as reported by Need To Know.
Anna said the infection affected her so badly that it took six months to fully recover.
The parasite later became part of a museum exhibition in Irkutsk dedicated to human and animal parasites, where Anna eventually saw it preserved in a jar of formalin.
She now lives in Chita with her husband and works as a photographer and pastry chef.
Dirofilariasis is a parasitic infection that mainly affects animals but can occasionally infect humans.
It is spread through mosquitoes and other biting insects carrying Dirofilaria larvae from infected animals, particularly dogs.
The parasite most commonly affects the eyes, although it can spread to other parts of the body. Adult worms can grow up to 30cm (12 inches) long.
Symptoms can include weakness, headaches, irritability, anxiety, and sleep problems. Treatment usually involves surgically removing the worm.
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