Only around 3% of people infected with a rare brain-eating amoeba survive, and the family of 13-year-old Caleb Ziegelbauer is praying that he can beat the odds. The Florida teen is fighting for his life at Golisano Children's Hospital in Fort Myers, CBS reports. Relatives say Caleb started hallucinating and was hospitalized five days after a July 1 visit to Port Charlotte beach, where he swam in brackish water. They say doctors told them the rare amoeba entered his body through his nose. The CDC says the Naegleria fowleri amoeba is found in warm, fresh water and can cause infections when water goes up the nose.
"He’s just the kindest soul but he’s so strong. He’s so strong. Like the fighting on the outside, that’s what we’re doing," Caleb's aunt, Elizabeth Ziegelbaur said, per WESH. "He is fighting his little heart out on the inside." The CDC says the amoeba only infects an average of three people in the US every year, "but these infections are usually fatal." Officials said last week that a Missouri resident infected after swimming in an Iowa lake had died, CNN reports.
State health officials, however, apparently aren't sure about the diagnosis, NBC reports. Florida Department of Health spokesman Jeremy Redfern says the state has no confirmed cases of primary amebic meningoencephalitis, the illness caused by the infection, and it hasn't had one since 2020. Katie Chet, another aunt. tells WBBH that two samples sent to the CDC were "inconclusive," but medical staff last week "kind of said that they’re mostly sure this is what they’re dealing with" based on his symptoms over the last two weeks. (More brain-eating amoeba stories.)
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