While people are often criticized for taking too many selfies, in this case, selfies may have saved a life. A series of selfies helped a woman identify something in her face, according to a case study from The New England Journal of Medicine.
Ready to be horrified? Well, if you have a weird lump on your face or body, quickly get them checked as it might be something worse than you expected. Because the little, itchy bump on this 32-year-old woman’s face in Russia seems to move around a lot, and it’s terrifying!
It was a little, frightening bulge that she initially spotted just below her left eye. She initially believed that the tiny bump was the result of a mosquito bite, but the itching sensation persisted.
The woman was shocked to discover that the tiny mass under her eyes had vanished after five days, however, it had moved up towards her top eyelid. Ten days after the lump first appeared, it continued to spread and eventually moved to her upper lip.
Unsure of what was occurring, the woman took selfies with those unusual lumps on her face and claimed that they didn’t hurt but were occasionally itchy. The woman eventually sought assistance from a doctor after realizing she couldn’t solve the issue on her own.
Along with parasitologist Fernando Simon of the University of Salamanca in Spain, Dr. Kartashev wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine, saying, “She documented these changes by taking photographs of her face (i.e. ‘selfies’), these nodules occasionally caused a localized itching and burning sensation, but otherwise she had no symptoms.”
The parasitic worm Dirofilaria repens, a type of nematode that frequently afflicts pets like dogs and cats, was found to be the moving bulge around her face.
Fernando Simon, a parasitologist at the University of Salamanca in Spain, claims that the worm is typically painless and doesn’t inflict any bodily harm to the sufferer. The issue will be resolved by removing it. So the worm was extracted by Dr. Vladimir Kartashev of Rostov State Medical University in Russia. The worm can grow up to 6 inches long and does migrate inside the body—could also cause danger when it reaches vital organs.
Dr. Kartashev and Simon wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine, “After removal of the worm, the patient had a full recovery.”
Sources: AWM, The New England Journal of Medicine, Kvoa
