A promising teenage athlete in the US is in a critical condition after a deadly brain-eating parasite is believed to have entered his nose while he was swimming in a lake.
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Riley is a track star and when meeting with his team and coach at Sam Houston State Park on August 13, he spent the day running, working out and swimming in the lake, according to Fox News.
Michael is a track runner who has qualified three times for the Junior Olympics, according to his family. Three-time junior Olympian and honor student Michael Riley Jr. should have been starting high school at Cy Ridge on Monday, but instead, the 14-year-old is at Texas Children’s Hospital fighting for his life.
Within a week, Riley was complaining about a headache and had a slight fever which then turned into severe neck pain and an increasingly more painful headache.
His terrified parents rushed him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff found his brain was swelling. Several weeks ago, a child from Houston did not survive the infection.
Riley’s family recounted his story on a GoFundMe page, and messages of support have been flooding in to the “Miracle 4 Michael” Facebook page. “He was visibly disoriented, had an unbearable headache and his neck hurt much like meningitis symptoms”, they said.
His family says he is now receiving an experimental drug that was flown in from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Tests confirmed that Riley had contracted the amoeba Naegleria fowleri, which causes a rare disease, Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), attacking cells in the brain. “You wouldn’t think that going to the doctor’s office that they’d tell you your son only has a couple days to live, which is what they told us”.
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His family is now working to raise awareness about the danger of brain-eating amoeba and how to prevent infection.
