A 10-year-old Texan contracts an amoeba that eats the brain while swimming

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The 10-year-old girl swam in the Brazos River and Whitney Lake in Bosque County, near Waco, on Labor Day weekend, according to CNN affiliate KWTX-TV.
Then, on September 8, the girl "began to have a headache and was quickly followed by a fever," according to a Facebook page created to support her. His family initially thought that it was a viral infection, but after visits to the family doctor and the girl who was having trouble sleeping, the family knew that something was wrong.

"She was inconsistent, did not answer, and was quickly swept away and taken to the emergency room," the family wrote on the girl's Facebook page.

The girl was then flown to the Cook Children's Health System in Fort Worth, where a lumbar puncture revealed that she had contracted Naegleria fowleri.

"It's the worst nightmare of any parent," daughter's aunt Crystal Warren told KWTX on Friday. "For this to happen to her when there were so many other people in the same waters on the same days, we simply do not understand why it was her."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that amoeba is a unicellular living organism commonly found in fresh and warm waters, such as lakes and rivers. The amoeba enters the body through the nose, travels to the brain and destroys brain tissue, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC, between 2009 and 2018, only 34 cases of Naegleria fowleri infection were reported in the United States. Only four of the 145 known cases survived between 1962 and 2018.

Warren told KWTX that she hoped her niece "will be number five to survive".

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