A 14-year-old athlete in Texas, who has qualified for the Junior Olympics, is now fighting for his life after contracting a brain-eating amoeba while swimming in a local lake two weeks ago.
Local track star Michael Riley Jr. had joined his coach and several other members of his school track team on a trip to Sam Houston State Park. Riley and his teammates worked out throughout the day before taking a swim in the lake.
A week after their trip, Riley went down with a slight fever and complained about a headache. He later experienced some pain in his neck and his headache began to worsen.
According to the teenager's family, Riley also appeared to be visibly disoriented which prompted them to take him to the Texas Children's Hospital (TCH). The doctors at the hospital recognized Riley's symptoms as similar to the ones they have observed from an earlier case around three weeks before.
On their official GoFundMe page, Riley's family explained that doctors at the Texas Children's Hospital conducted several tests on the teenager. They discovered that he had contracted Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba that causes the rare illness known as Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM).
Riley's family said that the doctors believe he had obtained the life-threatening organism when he and his teammates swam in the lake.
They added that Riley is now being given an experimental medication that was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.
The CDC said that the new drug was able to help save the life of Kali Hardig, a 12-year-old in Arkansas who contracted the Naegleria fowleri amoeba in 2013. Hardig is just one of a handful of people known to have contracted the infection and survive as the brain-eating amoeba is particularly fatal.
In the United States, three people have already died from complications of the infection.
Riley's family is working with health officials to raise the public's awareness regarding the danger of the Naegleria fowleri amoeba and how to prevent contracting the infection. The CDC said that the fatality rate of the brain-eating bacteria is at 95 percent.
