Teenager, 17, who ate a slug for £ 10 dares to reveal that he nearly died as a tragic boy

A man who survived after eating an infected slug in his teens revealed that doctors had given him a 17 million chance of surviving and had asked his mother to "plan his funeral".

Liam McGuigan was 17 when he dared to swallow the slug while on a football trip to school on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

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He now realizes how incredibly fortunate he is to tell his story, especially this week after Sam Ballard's passing.

In the days following Liam's challenge, the Grade 12 student began to feel lethargic. His muscles stopped working.

"I went to the hospital and they thought it could be my appendix. So they pulled that out, "he told news.com.au from Brisbane.

The doctors were wrong. A few hours later he was in the back of an ambulance, fully undressed, covered with ice to reduce his temperature.

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Liam's body was closing because the slug he swallowed was carrying a parasitic worm.

When the slug died, the worm found a new home in its spine and "basically ate its way up to my brain".

The 27-year-old has fallen into a coma. The doctors at Royal Brisbane Hospital kept him in a coma for four weeks and injected him with steroids in his body. They told his mother to "plan his funeral" and that he had a chance on 17 million to survive.

Then he woke up – a shadow of his old self.

"When I entered, I weighed 85 kg. When I came out of a coma, I weighed 38 kg. My thigh was like my wrist, the skin was hanging on it, "says Liam.

"I had to learn to eat, talk, walk, start all over again. I knew how to do it, but to make my brain tell my body how to do it was another thing. "

The staff scribbled the alphabet on a white board at RBH next to the words "yes" and "no". For weeks, Liam would communicate that way. If he wanted water, television or toilets, he had to point it out.

The speech therapy followed for four months and the 12th year went through the window. He would end up repeating, getting his certificate and finding "99%" of his old life.

This week, he was reminded again of his luck.

Sam Ballard, 29, died Friday in the middle of his family in North Sydney, eight years after eating a slug as a challenge.

Ballard contracted the same disease – eosinophilic meningoencephalitis – and spent 420 days in a coma.

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When he woke up, he had an acquired brain injury, which meant he needed 24/7 care and could not feed himself.

"We were sitting here spending a night of red wine appreciation, trying to act like an adult and a slug came crawling here," said Jimmy Galvin, a friend of Sam's.

"The conversation has begun, you know. "Should I eat it?" And Sam left. Stroke. That's how it happened.

When we learned of Sam's disappearance, Liam's phone was illuminated by messages from friends acknowledging that he did not suffer the same fate.

"All my friends and family saw Sam's article and tagged me there," says Liam. "I think about it all the time. It could have been me. "

Today, Liam is a happy and healthy house painter. He just got married too. His message is simple: "hugs, not slugs".

"It was stupid but I did not think it was dangerous," he says. "When you're 17, you do stupid things. I'm lucky. "

Sam and Liam both ate slugs carrying the rat lung worm.

The worm is usually found in rodents, but mollusks that eat rat faeces can also be infected.

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