Tragic … A young brides life was cut short after she contracted a rare, brain-eating amoeba on holiday. Picture: Team Koral Reef/Facebook. Source: Facebook
A YOUNG newlywed’s life was tragically cut short after she contracted a rare, brain-eating amoeba while swimming on a Spring holiday.
The Mirror reports that US woman Koral Reef, had just married her high school sweetheart Corey Pier when she fell ill.
The 20-year-old is believed to have caught a fatal amoeba called Balamuthia while swimming on holiday in Arizona in May 2013.
The couple were married in July that year and the symptoms started not long after.
“They told us there is no real treatment for this,” Mr Pier told the Press Examiner.
Heartbreak … Koral Reef fights for her life in a US hospital after contracting Balamuthia. Picture: Team Koral Reef/Facebook Source: Facebook
“I broke down and I was freaking out. I didn’t want to tell her. She wouldn’t remember anyway. She was there, but she wasn’t there. It was just eating away at her brain.”
Her mother, Cybil Meister, described her heartbreaking decline in an interview with NBC 7.
“She started with the headaches, the stiff neck, the sensitivity to light and heat was bad.”
“They said, ‘Oh, she’s having withdrawal from her birth control. It’s a migraine.’ They gave her medicine and sent her home and then she progressively got worse.”
“She went to Temecula Valley (a hospital) and they did an MRI. They showed us the MRI and the amoeba, which they didn’t know was an amoeba, but there was a mass covering the entire right side of her brain and partial of her left.”
Happy couple … Doctors thought Koral was just suffering from birth control withdrawal since she had just got off her pills recently. Picture: Team Koral Reef/Facebook Source: Facebook
Tragically, Reef died in October. The condition kills the vast majority of people infected with it – and there is no known effective treatment.
Koral’s family have created a Facebook page called ‘Team Coral Reef’ in the hope of raising awareness for the deadly condition.
“We’re reaching out to people trying to raise awareness because I don’t think people understand how serious it can be. It’s deadly,” Meister added.
Originally published as Brain-eating bug kills newlywed bride