Please Don't Snort the Water

     I am adding "Don't snort water" to the list of rules to live by.  A boy on a visit to St. Bernard Parish [think: "county" in other states] in Louisiana from the state of Florida is dead.  He died from something called primary amebic meningoencephalitis.  How did he get that?   He was playing in a ditch full of water.  The water was found to contain Naegleria fowleri.  What's that, you ask?  It's a brain-eating amoeba.  Chlorine can kill the nasty little single-celled organism.  If chlorine levels are too low, every once in a great while a water-snorter acquires the nasty almost entirely fatal disease from the snorting of infected water [or soil] through the nasal passages.  Swimming in a freshwater pond, river, lake, ditch?  Don't snort the water.  Swimming in your friend's backyard pool that has a low chlorine level?  Don't snort the water.  Drinking tap water which may or may not be infected with the brain-eating amoeba?  Don't snort the water. 

     Don't snort water at all.  And don't snort soil either.  Or mud.  Or dust.  Because if you acquire primary amebic meningoencephalitis, the odds are against you surviving.  Less than one percent of those infected survive.

     And I thought T.B.I. was a kick in the head.  Briella [my post brain damaged brain] may be a bit sideways [although still brilliant] but at least [to the best of my knowledge] there are no amoebas sucking up my brain's cells.

sapphoq healing t.b.i. says:  This post is not meant to offend the loved ones of anyone who has lost their life to primary amebic meningoencephalitis.  I am sorry for your loss.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/us/louisiana-brain-amoeba-water-supply/index.html

http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/naegleria/