Monsters Inside Me Season 2, Episode 10: Shape Shifters

Suicide Attackers

A fit and active dance instructor is suddenly stopped in her tracks by unbearable abdominal pain and vomiting, and a mysterious mass in her colon is revealed to have decaying worms. A middle-aged banker gets seizures from a parasite he picked up from traveling to his home country, Haiti. A scientist finds worms from Africa that threaten to damage his sight living in his skin and eyes.

Feeding Frenzy

A schoolteacher deals with an amoeba that eats at his liver and causes him high fever, abdominal pain, sweating, and chills. A young dancer gets worms from eating contaminated pork in her muscle tissue, causing her to get hives all over her body and her limbs to become stiff and painful. A retiree gets scabies from mites he got from staying in the hospital in the past.

47 min

Cold Blooded Killers

A nine-year-old hockey player comes down with encephalitis from the Acanthamoeba, which causes him to lose his concentration and balance, almost killing him. A computer programmer gets severe malaria from the Plasmodium parasite that makes him lose control of his mind and post-malarial neurological symptoms two weeks after an apparent recovery. A marathon runner deals with Leishmaniasis, which causes his spleen to swell.

47 min

Lurkers

The Crytosporidium parasite infects a little girl, causing her severe vomiting and diarrhea. A microscopic amoeba kills a firefighter with an autoimmune disorder by causing him meningitis. A rare, vicious tapeworm detaches the retina in a teenaged girl, destroying vision in her left eye.

47 min

Flesh Eaters

A cat scratch leads to a horrifying result for a veterinary volunteer; strange liquid oozes from a college student's arm.

Stowaways

Stories of parasites that reside inside their traveling hosts; an Iraq war veteran pulls a foot-long worm from his body.

60 min

Breeders

Daily stomach cramps reveal some of the most common parasites in nature.

47 min

Double Agents

A man tries hookworms to cure his allergies; a bloodsuckers gets into a writer's nose.

47 min

Homegrown Enemies

A middle-aged man who has been caring for his ailing mother gets Babesiosis from walking barefoot to the mailbox. Since he lost his spleen from cancer, he gets severe diarrhea, in addition to fever, fatigue, and night sweats. An active, busy middle-aged woman experiences stomach cramps, explosive diarrhea, lightheadedness, and blurred vision from the Toxocara parasite, which she probably got from contaminated food. An older mother of five children deals with nausea, loss of appetite, muscle spasms, and vomiting from the Strongyloides worm, which she may have picked up from being in contact with infected soil. Because of steroids she took for her breathing problems, her body became more vulnerable to the parasite.

47 min