With clock ticking, doctors, pharmacists come to the rescue after 1-year-old eats raccoon feces - CBC.ca
A southern Alberta couple who realized their infant had eaten raccoon feces found themselves racing against time to find a rare medication — and doctors and pharmacists across Western Canada mobilized to help them find it. Ashley Haughton learned raccoon scat can be extremely dangerous when she found it in her yard in Lethbridge, Alta., and researched how to dispose of it safely. Raccoons can carry a deadly form of roundworm called Baylisascaris procyonis , and the eggs live in their feces. An extremely rare parasitic infection can occur if humans ingest the eggs, which hatch into larvae, travel through the body and invade organs, including the eyes and brain. And so when her one-year-old son ate raccoon feces from a flower pot in the garden just over four weeks ago, Haughton knew to be alarmed: Symptoms of the infection include brain damage, blindness and coma. It can also be deadly. "They go through the stomach barrier, they...