A toddler may lose her eye due to a potentially fatal infection she developed after falling in dog feces at a park, London’s Daily Mail reported.
Amiee Langdon wiped her left eye after her hand touched the dog feces. Her mother tried to clean it off, but the next day she woke up with flu-like symptoms, screaming in pain.
“I turned the light in her bedroom on, and her eye was completely swollen shut and purple,” said Aimee’s mother Suzanne Langdon.
The 29-year-old nurse, of Fallowfield, Manchester in England, immediately took her daughter, who turns two next week, to the doctors. They diagnosed her with toxocariasis and admitted her to the hospital for four days to treat her with antibiotics. The infection, caused by parasitic worms in the dog feces, could spread to her optic nerve and brain. If antibiotics don't work, doctors will remove the eye.
Amiee has been discharged but is still taking three antibiotics – two orally and one directly in the eye.
“Amiee’s condition is the consequence of a thoughtless dog owner. If she hadn’t been treated within 72 hours, she could have died,” Langdon said.
The doctors are hopeful that antibiotics will clear the infection, which causes optical cellulosis and can lead to blindness and death.
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