Woman finds leech up her nose after traveling in Asia

12 October 2014 - 16:26 By Times LIVE
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A backpacker discovered that she had brought back home an unwanted traveling partner, when she found slimy three-inch leech wedged up her nose.

Daniela Liverani was travelling around south-east Asia when she started suffering persistent nosebleeds, but thought it was just a burst blood vessel, The Mirror, an online news site reported.

Once the 24-year-old was home to Edinburgh in Britain, she found something poking out from her right nostril and thought it was just a blood clot from an accident.

She only discovered the leech a week latter and rushed to the emergency room at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.

“About two weeks before I came home from Asia, I started having nosebleeds. I’d fallen off a motorbike just before they started so at first I thought I must have burst a blood vessel,” she told The Mirror.

“After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril. I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds.”

The Liverani says that even after the leech tried to make its way out of her nose she would sniff the assumed clot back in.

She says she only realised it was not a blood clot when she was in the shower and the leech came half way out of her nose.

Once at  the a hospital, a doctor was able to remove the leech. Liverani says it was as long as her forefinger but as fat as a thumb

She says she has no idea how the leach got up her nose.

The doctors told her that if she hadn’t gone to the hospital the leech may have worked its way into her brain.

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