A normal, healthy woman becomes host to a pork tapeworm that is burrowing into her brain and disabling her motor abilities. A handsome man contracts Chicken Pox and ends up looking like the victim of a third degree burn. A vigorous young athlete is bitten by an insect and becomes a target for flesh-eating strep.Even the most innocuous everyday activities such as eating a salad for lunch, getting bitten by an insect, and swimming in the sea bring human beings into contact with dangerous, often deadly microorganisms. In The Woman with a Worm in Her Head, Dr. Pamela Nagami reveals-through real-life cases-the sobering facts about some of the world's most horrific diseases: the warning signs, the consequences, treatments, and most compellingly, what it feels like to make medical and ethical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.Unfailingly precise, calmly instructive, and absolutely engrossing, The Woman with the Worm in Her Head offers both useful information and enjoyable reading.


Dr. Pamela Nagami is a practicing physician in internal medicine and infectious diseases with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA. She has made appearances on CNN and NPR. She lives with her husband and two children in Encino, California.