This story may sound gross, but it's real: a UK backpacker returns home with a leech stuck up her nose and feeding from her blood.
Twenty-four-year-old Daniela Liverani, who worked as a bartender in Edinburgh, had a time of her life when she went on a tour around Vietnam. However, even before her holiday was over, she noticed that she was having frequent nosebleeds.
She didn't make a fuss out of it believing that it's just a blood vessel that had burst open after falling off a bike, more so when the nosebleed stopped right after she came home.
But weird things also started to happen. Once in a while, she'll see something black and small going out of her nose. She thought it was simply congealed blood from a clot. So she'd sniff the object back up, although sometimes she had the urge to pull it out with no success. Then she began to feel something crawling up to her eyebrows sometimes.
It wasn't until one day, when she went into a shower, that the black object appeared outside her nose and dangled near her lip. She immediately went out, checked herself into the mirror, and realized that it wasn't congealed blood after all but an animal with ridges-a leech.
Along with her friend Jenny, she went into the Royal Infirmary's A&E where doctors and nurses did their best to remove the leech nestled in her nose.
But the procedure itself was very uncomfortable and painful. Her nose had to be pried open while a doctor tried to pull the leech out with tweezers and forceps. Since the leech was really slimy and agile, it moved back up her nose very quickly. This went on for 30 minutes until she can no longer feel the pain and the doctor proudly showing her the animal who, she said, may have gotten fat from seeping her blood.
According to the doctor, if she had not sought help immediately, the leech may have found its way to her brain, doing a much bigger disaster.