Dr. Edward Panacek of Sacramento, CA, treated a panicked bride on her wedding day. Kelly was all set to be married, but was forced to make an unexpected pitstop to the hospital. Wedding dress, styled updo, and all.
In this reenactment from Untold Stories of the ER, Kelly's mother told Dr. Panacek her daughter was experiencing anxiety and hallucinations. Perhaps it was wedding jitters that spun out of control, or a previously undetected behavioral issue. Whatever it was, the frantic mother of the bride thought Kelly had gone crazy and was calling for a psychiatrist to evaluate her in time for the wedding.
But Dr. Panacek didn't think it was a psychiatric issue at all.
Just when Kelly said things were getting worse, Dr. Panacek asked her to hold still while he inspected the back of her scalp. "My suspicions were confirmed," he said. He discovered the real reason behind the bride's complaints, and as it turned out, Kelly wasn't crazy. Dr. Panacek pulled out from Kelly's head a centimeter-long botfly larvae that was growing in the lesion on her scalp. Eek!
Kelly had gotten a mosquito bite on her bachelorette party in Costa Rica. She covered the scab with petroleum jelly, which sealed in and suffocated the larvae that laid its eggs on top of the mosquito bite. Botfly larvae are very rare in the United States.
But there wasn't just one larvae in Kelly's head…
