After 10 brain surgeries and a lot of other difficult tests, it is still there, but there is good news.
Doctors initially mistook this man’s illness for a brain tumor, but it turned out to be mold. But after 10 brain surgeries and other painful tests, the mold is still present, but there is some positive news.
Doctors were only able to diagnose Tyson Bottenus’ unusual brain condition after the third biopsy. Fortunately, it turned out that it wasn’t a brain tumor, as they had suspected, but the discoveries were really unpleasant: mold.
Bottenus, a ship captain from Rhode Island in his early 30s, appeared to be in good health on the outside, but he had black mold on his brain. He had Cladophialophora bantiana, a rare tropical fungus so rare that just about 120 instances have been documented since it was discovered in 1911, with 70 percent of them being fatal.
Bottenus told BuzzFeed that he’s had ten brain surgeries, five lumbar punctures, and two sets of tubes placed to connect his brain to his belly in the three years since his diagnosis. He also suffered a stroke, forcing him to relearn how to walk and talk.
The doctors’ best estimate was that Bottenus contracted the infection while on vacation in Costa Rica with his partner Liza in 2018 when his elbow was cut open after he fell off his bike into a gravel road. Months later, when he was already at home, he began to experience excruciating headaches and facial paralysis.
Because mold removal surgery was deemed too risky by experts, the mold was treated with antifungal medicines and steroids. His doctors recently discovered, however, that the antifungal medications had failed to pass the blood-brain barrier and were thus ineffective.
He’s now getting a new kind of treatment, and the good news is that if this infection had been lethal, he wouldn’t have survived. He has a better chance of surviving because he isn’t dead yet.
While Bottenus does not expect to be completely cured, he does hope to live a long and happy life.
Image Credit: MAXPIXEL
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