Rugby player who swallowed garden slug as dare fights Australia government over health bills

In 2010 at a friend’s party, strapping 19-year-old rugby player Sam Ballard swallowed a garden slug as a dare.

A group of young friends was sitting around at a table drinking red wine when a slug was produced and one of them said: “Eat it, I dare you.”

Ballard swallowed the slug.

Prior to this, Ballard’s mother Katie had thought her son as a “larrikin” (hooligan) but “invincible,” that nothing could ever happen to him.

She described him as “my rough-and-tumble Sam.”

But the teenager’s life was to take a devastating turn.

Ballard, from Sydney’s north shore, fell ill and was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital where he was diagnosed as having been infected with rat lungworm.

The worm is found in rodents, but snails or slugs can become infected when they eat the feces of rats with the parasite, known as Angiostrongylus cantonensis.



Source : foxnews