Rugby Player Sam Ballard Died After Suffering from Coma

Sam Ballard, a 28 years Australian rugby player has died after suffering 8 years form coma who became paralyzed after eating a garden slug on a dare with friends without knowing it was infected with rat lung worm.
The teenager from Sydney’s upper north shore was having a laugh and some red wine with mates in the backyard, in 2010 and took the challenge of easting a garden creature and he died in hospital in Sydney on Friday, surrounded by his family and closest friends, according to Australian media.
He spent three years in hospital with an array of medical complications following the incident. The night have changed the 19-year-old’s life, and the lives of everybody around him. Lisa Wilkinson, a presenter on The Sunday Project show interviewed the Ballard family, said his last words to his mother were: “I love you.”
Sam’s story was big news in Australia, especially last year when his disability insurance was slashed by more than half. But the decision was later reversed to the Grafton Daily Examiner.
“We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown-ups and a slug came crawling across here, Should I eat it?’ And off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened,” said Jimmy Galvin, one of Sam’s best friends .
Doctors ruled out multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease that his father suffers from but found he had actually contracted rat lungworm, a disease found in rodents that can also infect snails and slugs through the larvae in their feces.
Sam contracted eosinophilic meningo-encephalitis, which many people recover from. Sam didn’t.
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