Monsters Inside Me

These killers lie dormant, waiting for the right time to strike. Eleven-month-old Garrett Richardson ingests the eggs of a worm, and within days the creature travels to his brain and goes about feeding on its tissue. A Vietnam veteran survived the enemy attacks on the front lines, but back at home — unknown to him — a killer is stealthily working its way through his body, laying waste to his organs and lymph system. By the time the medical evidence reveals the source many years later, the killer is long gone. And John Figge and many of his family members live for six years with unwanted hitchhikers from Africa traveling around in their bodies. Only when one of these creatures begins to attack John's brain are they discovered. Can the family get rid of these deadly parasites before the damage is critical? These are all stealthy predators that get inside their hosts, yet work on very different timetables. Dangerous and often hard to detect, this is the story of the war on sleeper cell parasites.

A fit and active dance instructor is suddenly stopped in her tracks by unbearable abdominal pain and vomiting, and a mysterious mass in her colon is revealed to have decaying worms. A middle-aged banker gets seizures from a parasite he picked up from traveling to his home country, Haiti. A scientist finds worms from Africa that threaten to damage his sight living in his skin and eyes.

A toddler starts worrying her parents when she loses her appetite for the foods she normally eats, but starts craving salt and even cat food. After developing a rash, her parents find out that she has been infected by the Toxocara canis parasite. A middle-aged executive of a company starts to feel pain in his abdomen, not knowing that he has been infected by a bacteria called ESBL E. coli. A married couple start to feel flu-like symptoms, which turns out they've been infected by the plague bacterium. However, the husband's condition is much worse, and even has to get his calves amputated.

A 7-year-old girl contracts the bubonic plague and suffers a 107 fever, vomiting, painful buboes, and seizures; a yoga instructor finds out that what she thought was influenza is actually necrotizing fasciitis caused by Streptococcus intermedius and Peptostreptococcus; a state wrestling champion contracts angiostrongyliasis.

A teenage girl begins having strange mood swings from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis; an elderly mother gets chills, hand numbness, wrist pain, and oozing blisters from Vibrio vulnificus she got from being pricked by a crab while making a stew; an athletic military veteran from the Afghan war competing in reality shows returns home from Fiji feeling hotness, a pinching sensation in her arms and toes, and hallucinations from rat lungworm she got from eating a slug in a reality show in the jungle

A 4-year-old boy literally drowns in his own mucus, being a victim of an outbreak of the Enterovirus D68 virus; a 7-year old scrapes his knee on a rock at the beach, but when his father puts a liquid bandage on it, it causes it to swell the size of an orange – then, his mother squeezes the wound and finds a sea snail (Littorina scutulata) inside; a college student experiences loss of appetite, fatigue, fever, jaundice, and repetitive nightmares that turn into a reality from getting infected with malaria caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite after returning from a trip to Ghana.

This episode looks back at three cases from past episodes: a teenage boy with a grill bristle in his intestines (A Deadly Swim); another teenage boy with leprosy (Help! My Son is a Leper); and a teenage girl whose lungs are afflicted with Cryptococcus gattii fungi (My Body Is Rotting).

A young girl is brought to the hospital with stabbing pains in her scalp; a mother's mysterious symptoms threaten to tear a family apart; a deadly invader turns a relaxing vacation into a nightmare.