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By Catharine Huddle | January 29, 2018
Ron and Darlene Fields pose during their 2016 trip to Hawaii — before Ron got sick. Photo courtesy of Darlene Fields
Ron and Darlene Fields had been married for 26 years when they decided to take a “free” 12-day trip to Hawaii in fall 2016.
Ron was 62 then, and his construction business in Sarasota, FL, was really taking off. Darlene, who does paperwork for the company, had saved up credit card reward points so they could fly to Los Angeles, spend a night there and then fly to Maui for five nights before moving on to the Big Island.
The only things they expected to pay for were food and an excursion from one side of the Big Island to the other.
The Fieldses, physically fit and devoted for the past dozen years to eating organically, were a couple of days away from heading home when Ron got sick.
“My husband woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t quite describe what was going on with his skin,” Darlene said during a telephone interview from their Florida home. “It was worse in L.A., and more when we got home. … We arrived home on a Saturday and by Thursday, he laid down in the bed — and he couldn’t get up for months.
“He called it burning skin pain. Then he started to have bladder problems and couldn’t urinate.”
Ron and Darlene Fields would end up taking a journey longer than any they’d imagined when they booked their flight to Hawaii.
Along the way, they’d go to emergency rooms, a hospital in Gainesville, FL, and an integrated health center. They’d see neurologists and urologists, general practitioners and meningitis specialists, medical marijuana consultants and acupuncturists and hypnotists.
The cause
The likely culprit behind it all: a tiny slug hiding in one of the many salads the couple ate during their trip.
The slug likely was home to a disgusting little parasite called rat lungworm that is carried in rat feces, which slugs and snails eat. The slugs and snails serve as intermediate hosts for the rat lungworms, which can’t mature or reproduce in humans but can cause a host of physical problems including eosinophilic meningitis and ocular Angiostrongylus if people ingest them.
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