Backpacker returns to UK and finds 3-inch leech living up her nose

A British backpacker got more than she bargained for when she went travelling. After she arrived home, Daniela Liverani, 24, had no idea the three-inch creature was living up her nostril until it started dangling out of her nose when she was in the shower. The graduate was travelling around south-east Asia when she started suffering persistent nosebleeds, but put it down to a burst blood vessel from a previous motorbike crash.

I asked the doctor what would’ve happened if I hadn’t gone to hospital and she said he’d probably have worked his way into my brain.

Daniela Liverani

Days after returning to her Edinburgh home, she spotted something poking out of her nose, which she dismissed as congealed blood. But on discovering it was a critter, she went to A&E. It emerged the slimy black blood-sucker had been living up her nose for an entire month. The doctor used a nose forceps to prise open her nostrils really wide while nurses pinned her to the bed and extracted the creature. Experts believe Daniela could have accidentally swallowed the leech - which she’s dubbed Mr Curly - when she was swimming in Vietnam.

Even though it was there for around a month, these leeches don’t grow all that quickly, so it wouldn’t have been much smaller when it went up there. It would have been quite sizeable. It’s interesting that people don’t feel these leeches go up their nose.

Mark Siddal, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and an expert on leeches

Odd News leech nose