Parents call for warnings after brain-eating amoeba killed their son
Jaysen Carr, 12, died a week after a trip to a North Carolina lake where a water-based amoeba entered his brain through his nose
Two weeks after Jaysen Carr spent the Fourth of July holiday swimming and riding on a boat on one of South Carolina’s most popular lakes, he was dead from an amoeba that lives in the warm water and entered his brain through his nose.
His parents had no idea the brain-eating amoeba, whose scientific name is Naegleria fowleri, even existed in Lake Murray, just 24km (15 miles) west of Columbia.
They found out when a doctor told them the diagnosis after what seemed like a fairly regular headache and nausea took a serious turn.
Jaysen, 12, fought for a week before dying on July 18, making him one of about 160 people known to have died from the amoeba in the US in the past 60 years.
As they grieve their son, the boy’s parents said they were stunned to learn South Carolina, like most other US states, has no law requiring public reporting of deaths or infections from the amoeba. The lake was not closed and no water testing was performed. If they had not spoken up, they wonder if anyone would have even known what happened.
“I can’t believe we don’t have our son. The result of him being a child was losing his life. That does not sit well. And I am terrified it will happen to someone else,” Clarence Carr said as his wife sat beside him, hugging a stuffed tiger.