The first time Lowri Denman knew something was wrong was when she made the horrifying discovery of a metre-long tapeworm after going to the toilet.
"It looked absolutely disgusting, like Sellotape with like little ridges in it," said the 42-year-old from Carmarthen.
It was the first symptom of
neurocysticercosis, which left Lowri with 38 parasites in her brain causing extreme headaches, seizures and psychosis.
She is one of only a handful of people in the UK who are diagnosed with the brain infection each year, which is caused by the larvae of the pork tapeworm.
After spending years regaining her health, Lowri wants to turn her ordeal into something positive by raising awareness of the condition.
Lowri, who works in media, went on a three-month trip around India in 2007. This is where her doctor - Dr Brendan Healy, a consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology - believes she picked up the infection.
Lowri made the decision to avoid meat for the trip, hoping it would help her to avoid food poisoning, but Dr Healy believes she inadvertently ate pork that contained microscopic tapeworm eggs.
It was not until three years later, in 2010, that Lowri discovered the tapeworm when in a restaurant toilet and flushed it down the loo.
She went to the GP but stool tests came back satisfactory and she was feeling well so life continued as usual.
Within a year she began getting terrible headaches.
Then, in 2011, she suffered her first seizure.
"I was really starting to struggle getting some words out," she said.
"The next thing I came around and I was in an ambulance and I was like 'how has that happened? Why?'"
A hospital stay, CAT scan and MRI scan followed and Lowri was told to come in for the results.
"The doctor sat me down and said, 'right, okay, we've looked at your scans and we've found 38 parasites on your brain'," said Lowri.
"Me and my mum were just jaws on the floor like, 'what on earth, what is that?'"
Initially they thought it was
toxoplasmosis, an infection spread through contact with infected cat faeces.
But then Lowri's mother asked if her seizure could be linked to the tapeworm she had discovered a year earlier.
After further investigations she was finally diagnosed with neurocysticercosis.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), humans are infected by consuming food such as raw or undercooked pork, water contaminated with tapeworm eggs, or through poor hygiene practices.
It is exceptionally rare in the UK and cases are almost exclusively seen in individuals who have
migrated from endemic regions.
