At this point, I don’t think anyone really wants to read any more about worms in people’s eyes, but here we are. A Florida man had eye surgery to remove a “brain-eating parasitic worm that was living in his eye.”

The parasitic worm, Taenia solium, swam through the man’s bloodstream from his stomach to his eye, likely caused by under-cooked pork the man ate around Christmas. Months later he started seeing black dots, a sign the worm had moved into his eye. The doctor that treated him is quoted as saying:

“If the parasite dies the inflammation could blind Cordero, if it lays some of its 50000 eggs they could travel to his brain and begin eating it turning it basically into swiss cheese. Thankfully that didn’t happen.”

Is it comforting to know this kind of thing is relatively rare in the United States? According to the CDC, “the number of new cases in the U.S. each year is probably less than 1000.” And “eye infections with pork tapeworms are rare: Only about 20 such cases have been reported worldwide.” Also, properly cooking meat to an internal temperature between 145° F for pork and 165° F for chicken kills the parasite.