It started with something she never expected to see in a restaurant toilet. What followed was years of seizures, memory problems, psychosis and a diagnosis so rare that her doctor says he may never encounter another case like it.
When Lowri Denman travelled around India in 2007, she came home with unforgettable memories.
She never imagined she had also brought home an infection that would remain hidden inside her body for years before turning her life upside down.
The 42-year-old from Carmarthen, Wales, has shared her extraordinary story after being diagnosed with neurocysticercosis, a rare brain infection caused by the larvae of the pork tapeworm.
The condition left her with 38 parasites in her brain, triggering severe headaches, epileptic seizures and eventually psychosis.
The first warning came three years after her trip.
Lowri said she was in a restaurant when she discovered what appeared to be a metre-long tapeworm after using the toilet.
“It looked absolutely disgusting, like Sellotape with little ridges in it,” she recalled.
She visited her GP, but stool tests came back normal, and she felt healthy, so life carried on.
It wasn’t until the following year that everything changed.
She began suffering crippling headaches before experiencing her first seizure in 2011.
“I was really starting to struggle getting some words out,” she said.
“The next thing I came around and I was in an ambulance, and I was like, ‘How has that happened? Why?'”
Scans at hospital revealed something no one had expected.
Doctors told Lowri and her mother they had found 38 parasites in her brain.
“Me and my mum were just jaws on the floor like, ‘What on earth… what is that?'” she said.
At first, doctors believed she had toxoplasmosis, an infection often linked to cat faeces.
But then her mother remembered the tapeworm Lowri had discovered a year earlier.
Further investigations confirmed the real diagnosis: neurocysticercosis, an illness caused when tapeworm eggs enter the body and eventually form cysts in the brain.
According to the World Health Organization, people can become infected through food or water contaminated with tapeworm eggs or poor hygiene. The condition is exceptionally rare in the UK and is usually seen in people who have lived in or travelled to countries where the disease is more common.
For a while, it looked as though treatment had worked.
Lowri spent two weeks in hospital receiving anti-parasitic medication and steroids.
She returned to normal life, travelled to New Zealand with her sister, ran half marathons, took circus classes and even moved to Bristol.
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Then, without warning, she collapsed at work.
Fresh scans showed swelling around the parasites in her brain.
Her condition deteriorated rapidly.
She developed confusion, numbness, severe anxiety and eventually psychosis. She had to give up work, move back in with her father and spend six weeks in a neuropsychiatric hospital.
“This paranoia and psychosis started kicking in… there was severe anxiety, panic attacks,” she said.
“I spiralled a lot.”
Her friend of two decades, Nicola Brown, said the change was heartbreaking.
“I walked into the room and she was essentially behaving like a child,” Nicola recalled.
She described seeing Lowri crawling across the floor, hiding behind curtains and sitting on her father’s lap.
After the visit, Lowri sent Nicola a message claiming the police were looking for her.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Is this Lowri now? Will we ever see the Lowri we know again?'” Nicola said.
Recovery did not happen overnight.
It took years before Lowri slowly rebuilt her confidence.
She completed an art foundation course, later earned a degree in interior design and eventually returned to work in 2022.
Today, the parasites remain in her brain, but they have calcified and are no longer active.
She has not suffered a seizure since 2017, although she will continue taking epilepsy medication for the rest of her life.
Her consultant, infectious disease specialist Dr Brendan Healy, described her as a once-in-a-career patient.
“This is the only case I’ve seen like this with presentation over many, many years,” he said.
“I wouldn’t expect to see another case like this during my career.”
Despite everything she endured, Lowri says she still remembers India with affection and refuses to let the experience define her.
Instead, she hopes sharing her story will help others recognise the condition and remind people not to ignore unusual symptoms, no matter how healthy they may feel.
“You don’t know what’s around the corner,” she said.
“I’m happy to be alive and healthy and fit again, and I never take that for granted.”
