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Surgeons opened her skull to remove a cancerous tumor. Instead, they found a tapeworm
Rachel Palma, 42, was having involuntary movements and hallucinations. You won't believe what doctors found in her brain. They still don't know how it got there https://t.co/608eG7FYG3 pic.twitter.com/QtMUoqKQr9
— WPLG Local 10 News (@WPLGLocal10) June 8, 2019
Doctors had broken the disheartening news to Rachel Palma, explaining that the lesion on her brain was suspected to be a tumor, and her scans suggested that it was cancerous.
Palma, a newlywed entering a new chapter in her life, said she was in shock, unwilling to believe it was true.
In September, scrubbed-up surgeons in an operating room at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City opened Palma’s cranium and steeled themselves for a malignant brain tumor, said Jonathan Rasouli, chief neurosurgery resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“We were all saying, ‘What is this?’ ” Rasouli recalled Thursday in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “It was very shocking. We were scratching our heads, surprised at what it looked like.”
The surgeons removed it from Palma’s brain and placed it under a microscope to get a closer look. Then they sliced into it – and found a baby tapeworm.
