J John Portera D M D

Nails That Failed: a Medically Factual Mystery J John Portera D M D

Publisher Marketing: The killer left nothing visible on the teenager's body-nothing. The attack was silent and unsuspecting. No fingerprints, no DNA, not a clue was left at the scene or on the boy's body. Three teenagers entered an environment wherein dwelled a deadly killer. They left it laughing and full of life. Two weeks later, one was dead. His body bore no marks, only symptoms of a sickness progressively worsening each day. Physicians relentlessly sought identifying cause of symptoms. Each drug known to counter what the laboratory results reflected proved to be ineffective. Finally, the teenager lapsed into a coma, then cardiac arrest. Death had dropped its darkened drape. Death came ten days after Terry's first symptom-a stiff neck upon awakening, and only four days after the threesome cheerfully walked away from where the killer cleverly concealed itself-a perfect place for enticing the boys to enter. It struck its unsuspecting blow at a precise moment-one when the victim's involuntary action, between man and matter, favored the killer. The sudden, silent strike was lethal-enough to create Terry's lingering death. The irresistible setting the boys entered was on an unusually warm February day in Florida. Indisputable identification of the killer came from a medical pathologist. His words were, "the young man died of Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM). It's rather uncommon, but it's a fatal infection of the brain. I believe Terry inhaled a deadly parasitic pathogen while in the lake-a single-celled organism known as Naegleria fowleri. Water containing this amoeba, if inhaled deeply into the nasal passageways, causes an inevitable death." The doctor didn't describe the autopsy sight of the boy's brain. Had he done so, he would have described a brain resembling moth-eaten wool, more than human brain tissue.