14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, doctors in Scotland pulled a humongous leech from a woman's nose. The creature, a photo of which is available below, is believed to have crawled up Daniela Liverani's nose while she was backpacking around Southeast Asia.
More precisely, specialists say that the leech most likely worked its way inside the 24-year-old woman's body when she went swimming in a lake in Vietnam.
At the time it was pulled out by doctors, the creature measured an impressive 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) in length. Still, specialists say that, when it first entered Daniela's nose, it was probably much smaller.
Hence the fact that the 24-year-old woman took about a month to figure out that something was seriously off and ask for help from doctors at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.
Not your usual nosebleeds
As mentioned, Daniela Liverani had the leech crawl inside her nose while she was visiting Vietnam. Having attached itself to the 24-year-old woman's body and starting to feed, the animal caused her to suffer regular nosebleeds.
However, the woman didn't think much of these episodes for several weeks in a row. She simply assumed that she was experiencing nosebleeds because of a motorbike accident she had been involved in not long before her nose started acting out.
“I’d fallen off a motorbike just before they started so at first I thought I must have burst a blood vessel. After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril,” Daniela Liverani told the press in an interview.
“I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds. I saw him so many times but I just sniffed him back up. I tried to blow him out and grab him but I couldn’t get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose,” she added, as cited by Daily Record.
One day, while the 24-year-old was taking a shower, the leech once again tried to have a look at the world outside the nose that was its home. This time, Daniela managed to get a good look at it in a mirror, and realized that it was a living creature.
A most bizarre medical intervention
To remove the creature from inside her nose, doctors and nurses first had to use a special forceps to widen her nostrils as much as possible. They then used tweezers to grab hold of the leech and pull it out. When removed from Daniela's nose, the animal was still alive and moving around.
Not at all surprisingly, the 24-year-old was nothing if not shocked when she first laid eyes on the leech that traveled from Vietnam to Scotland nestled inside her nose. “He was about as long as my forefinger but as fat as my thumb. He could move so fast as well, which freaked me out,” she confessed.
Now that the leech is no longer feeding on her, Daniela doesn't get regular nosebleeds anymore. What's more, doctors say that the creature didn't cause any major injuries while living inside the woman's nose, and that the 24-year-old is sure to make a full recovery.
