Australian who swallowed garden slug as a dare becomes a vegetable

In 2010 at a friend’s party, strapping 19-year-old rugby player Sam Ballard swallowed a garden slug as a dare.

A group of young friends was sitting around at a table drinking red wine when a slug was produced and one of them said: “Eat it, I dare you.”

Ballard swallowed the slug.

Prior to this, Ballard’s mother Katie had thought her son as a “larrikin” (hooligan) but “invincible,” that nothing could ever happen to him.

She described him as “my rough-and-tumble Sam.”

But the teenager’s life was to take a devastating turn.

Ballard, from Sydney’s north shore, fell ill and was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital where he was diagnosed as having been infected with rat lungworm.

The worm is found in rodents, but snails or slugs can become infected when they eat the feces of rats with the parasite, known as Angiostrongylus cantonensis.

While most people develop no symptoms, very rarely it causes an infection of the brain.

Ballard contracted eosinophilic meningoencephalitis, which many people recover from and which he initially seemed to be rallying.

But he then lapsed into a coma for 420 days and became a quadriplegic.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/03/06/rugby-player-who-swallowed-garden-slug-as-dare-fights-australia-government-over-health-bills.amp.html

this was him before the slug

this is him after the slug

moral of the story: dont do slugs

Sad

Posted by black_kevorkian
this was him before the slug

this is him after the slug

moral of the story: dont do slugs

jesus christ. that's horrible. always educate your children the horrors of germs/diseases.

a promising athlete too. so sad for the family too.

that's darwinism in action

Progeny of the convicts proving why their ancestors got caught in the first place. Nothing to see here, move along.....LOL

Posted by black_kevorkian
this was him before the slug

this is him after the slug

moral of the story: dont do slugs

He must have pissed someone off badly in his past life

How devastating freak accidents like this scare the shit out of me because they’re always the type to haunt you with “if only I didn’t eat that fucking slug”

I was watching this girls makeup channel and she had no arms and legs and this is her story on how she ended up contracting meningitis

Could happen to anyone

Posted by Arielle83
This seems very Aussie either way.

Who tf dared him? Oh Yeah, his friend that’s somewhere living life.

I wonder how he feels now

Dumbfuck!