- Aug 6, 2012
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Just a tough read for me. A reminder life is precious, definitely cruel and rarely fair. This kid was just being a kid and a one in a million bad cards fell for him.
Rugby player who swallowed garden slug as dare has died, 8 years after health nightmare began
Sam Ballard never did anything wrong, if you ask family and friends.
The teenager from Sydney’s upper north shore was having a laugh and some red wine with mates in the backyard, “trying to act like grown ups”.
It was 2010 and it was a night that would change his life, and the lives of everybody around him, forever.
A slug crawled across the concrete patio and, teens being teens, a dare emerged for Sam to eat it.
One of his best friends, Jimmy Galvin, later described the moment.
“We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown up and a slug came crawling across here,” he said.
“The conversation came up, you know. ‘Should I eat it?’ And off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened.”
He didn’t become sick immediately, but complained of serious pain in his legs in the days after.
He was worried it might’ve been a symptom of eating the slug, but his mother told him not to worry: “No-one gets sick from that,” she said.
Sam was worried he might have developed Multiple sclerosis, like his father, but that was ruled out.
Doctors later determined Sam was infected with rat lungworm.
The worm that infected Sam is usually found in rodents, but snails and slugs can also become infected when they eat rat feces.
Sam contracted eosinophilic meningo-encephalitis, which many people recover from. Sam didn’t.
He fell into a coma for 420 days and when he woke had an acquired brain injury.
Last week, eight years after he fell ill, Sam died. "The Sunday Project’s" Lisa Wilkinson broke the news during a somber but brief segment.
Rugby player who swallowed garden slug as dare has died, 8 years after health nightmare began
Sam Ballard never did anything wrong, if you ask family and friends.
The teenager from Sydney’s upper north shore was having a laugh and some red wine with mates in the backyard, “trying to act like grown ups”.
It was 2010 and it was a night that would change his life, and the lives of everybody around him, forever.
A slug crawled across the concrete patio and, teens being teens, a dare emerged for Sam to eat it.
One of his best friends, Jimmy Galvin, later described the moment.
“We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown up and a slug came crawling across here,” he said.
“The conversation came up, you know. ‘Should I eat it?’ And off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened.”
He didn’t become sick immediately, but complained of serious pain in his legs in the days after.
He was worried it might’ve been a symptom of eating the slug, but his mother told him not to worry: “No-one gets sick from that,” she said.
Sam was worried he might have developed Multiple sclerosis, like his father, but that was ruled out.
Doctors later determined Sam was infected with rat lungworm.
The worm that infected Sam is usually found in rodents, but snails and slugs can also become infected when they eat rat feces.
Sam contracted eosinophilic meningo-encephalitis, which many people recover from. Sam didn’t.
He fell into a coma for 420 days and when he woke had an acquired brain injury.
Last week, eight years after he fell ill, Sam died. "The Sunday Project’s" Lisa Wilkinson broke the news during a somber but brief segment.
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