Exotic travel can lead to exotic diseases
Unusual illnesses not uncommon for adventure tourists
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6866755/Kevin Keogh spent the morning doing ordinary chores. By afternoon, he was climbing out the window of his Mercedes and onto the roof as it sped down a busy street. Standing on top of the car, his arms outstretched as if he were surfing, he jumped to his death. What would make the chief financial officer for the city of Phoenix do something so bizarre?
A leading theory is a parasite he caught on a trip to Mexico several years earlier. The bug can live for years inside the body, travel to the brain and cause seizures and hallucinations — symptoms Keogh started suffering a few months after his trip.
His death in December is an extreme example of an exotic illness picked up in a foreign land. It’s a goes-with-the-territory downside that many people underestimate when they venture into territory far from their back yards.
It took eight months for doctors to figure out Keogh’s illness, said his wife, Karlene. A blood test showed he had cysticercosis, a parasitic illness often acquired from undercooked pork and common in Latin and Central America. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s office is awaiting more tests to determine whether that led to his death.