The holiday food court meal that left Perth parents battling horrific parasite
A Perth family has recalled the horrifying moment a shared meal at a food court on a holiday in Thailand led to an 18-month battle to save their business when their health rapidly deteriorated.
Young parents Stacey Barnes and Ryan Prigg thought nothing of a Pad Thai they ate together at a food court in 2017 – yet the seemingly innocuous cheap meal proved costly.
When they returned home from the holiday with their children, the couple began to feel drained and were lacking energy. It got to the point they couldn’t even get out of bed.
In a prolonged attempt to discover the mystery cause of their illness, they were eventually told a parasite called Dientamoeba Fragilis from the dish they’d bought on holiday was the cause.
In their wait to find a doctor who could bring them back to full health after several dismissed their symptoms, the pair’s life was precariously close to crashing down around them.
Their online lifestyle coaching business took a huge hit, with their income of $10,000 a month rapidly disappearing as they remained unable to work.
“Losing our online business, my passion and a big purpose really was hard, mentally physically, emotionally and financially!” Ms Barnes wrote on Facebook earlier this year.
According to Professor Miles Beadman, a specialist in infectious diseases, the problem in finding treatment to battle the parasite lay in a common belief in the medical industry that the parasite doesn’t cause disease.
Dr Beadman told 7News 25 per cent of healthy people have Dientamoeba Fragilis in their gut and doesn’t cause issues for most.
When troublesome, the common parasite can cause health issues such as diarrhoea. In rare cases, such as the couple’s, it can cause nausea, loss of appetite and fatigue.
Ms Barnes said the anxious wait and fear that this could be their lives from now on was terrifying.
“It’s made the last year and a half of my life, one of the hardest times of my life,” she said online.
“Every day was a struggle from the get go. I had no memory I couldn't recall anything. I was in a constant state of fogginess.”
On their fourth attempt, the pair eventually found a doctor who was willing to treat them and placed them on a four-week prescription of antibiotics.
They slowly returned to full-health, able to pick up their life and their business after a frightening 18 months of uncertainty.
“It's not nice to know that something inside of you is taking all of your nutrition and depleting your body of energy and life,” Ms Barnes recalled to 7News.
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