WARNING: Graphic image
A Tasmanian journalist has spoken about the horror parasite that “marched” across one of his eyeballs, turning it blood red and leaving him partially blind forcing him to have invasive surgery and take 17 pills a day.
It’s likely the parasite jumped into ABC Radio Tasmania presenter Joel Rheinberger’s eyeball from a cat.
“It started as a squiggle in my vision,” Rheinberger said on ABC Tasmania.
“Not a little floater as they’re called but a squiggle as if there was some information missing coming into my eye.
“Then the Squiggle turned into a fair piece of non-vision and was spreading.”
He said that he lost about a quarter of the vision his left eye.
An ophthalmologist suspected he had suffered a stroke in his retina and a blockage in his artery and sent him to hospital.
The retina is at the back of the eye and is vital in processing light and sending that information to the brain to form visual perception.
It lies close to the brain and initially it was suspected he had suffered a clot.
Surgeons performed a vitrectomy on Rheinberger.
“My eye had to be deflated where they take all the jelly out of your eye and reflate it with fresh stuff so your eye gets all bulgy,” he said of the process.
The conclusion was that it was not a clot at all but the problems were caused by toxoplasmosis, a parasite found in cat faeces and food, had made the leap into the presenter’s eye.
“Toxoplasmosis choked off an artery in my eye and caused a stroke in my retina,” he said.
For most people infection with toxoplasmosis is relatively benign. The majority won’t even notice it while some may get flu like symptoms.
For infants and those with weakened immune systems it can be more serious which meant Rheinberger’s symptoms were rare.
“It never actually hurt, it was all just visual. I’m very grateful for that,” he was reported as saying in The Mercury.
Nonetheless Rheinberger, who is now back presenting, said the bug “marched across my retina”. That led his eye to turn blood red and all the poking around has led to a huge black eye.
Despite the surgeries, and the flushing out of the toxoplasmosis, it’s likely the blind spot won’t go away
“It permanently killed some on my retina so vision won’t be back.”
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