TAMPA — Nothing seemed wrong or out of place when it was time for Sam Cordero to make an appointment for a routine eye exam.

The 57-year-old man from Tampa occasionally saw a few bright or foggy spots in his left eye, but thought it was just "floaters," a common occurrence as the eye ages, ophthalmologists say. But it turned out to be a parasite.

Actually, a worm.

"It was scary," Cordero said of the larvae that hatched in his body, grew, then became trapped in his eye. The larger fear was that, in time, it could have laid eggs in his brain.

"I was pretty freaked out about it," he said.

It's rare that eye doctors see this sort of thing in the United States, says Dr. Don Perez of the Perez Eye Center, and one of Cordero's doctors. But he's seen this same situation in Tampa already once before.

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"It's like getting struck by lightning twice," Perez said. "You see these parasite cases more often in less developed countries and tropical places, like the Dominican Republic or the Caribbean. But because of the mass immigration we've seen to Florida in recent years, cases like these are popping up more frequently."

Cordero is Puerto Rican but said he hadn't been to the island in many years.

"I don't even have a passport," he said.

In the cases Perez had studied from other countries, most people contracted the parasite, which are usually tapeworms, from eating undercooked meat like pork. That made sense to Cordero, who says it's part of his culture and heritage to eat pork, especially around the holidays.

"I know around Christmas, we ordered pork and other food from a local restaurant," he said. "It must have come from that. But I'm the only one who got it."

And the timing makes sense, Perez said. The parasite was discovered in early February and removed just a few weeks later. Cordero most likely ingested the larvae of the tapeworm which spread through his system and eventually became stuck in his eye. These parasites tend to like to be in the eye and in the brain, which can lead to serious, if not fatal consequences, Perez said.

"You see cases where there are cysts full of fertilized eggs all over the brain," he said. "Luckily we caught it just in time."

Oddly enough, "eye worms" have been making headlines nationally this week. A woman in Oregon who had worms coming out of her eyes was diagnosed as the first human case of a parasitic infection spread by flies. Fourteen worms were pulled from eyes, according to the Associated Press.

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Over the few weeks that Perez treated Cordero, taking blood tests and multiple MRI exams of his brain, they were able to watch the worm physically grow in size.

"They tend to not like the light and can hide from it," he said. "But as the worm grew, he became sluggish. That's when we could see it."

Perez was able to successfully remove it during surgery Feb. 8 at Tampa General Hospital. Cordero is recovering well and hasn't shown any symptoms of having anymore worms in his body. This experience, however, has changed the way he thinks about food.

"Pork? I'm done with it. Never again. Fast food too," he said. "It's not worth it. But this has been an experience that's made me rethink my health and my choices."

The first time Perez saw this was in 2012, when a man of Dominican Republic descent came to his Tampa office after seeing many ophthalmologists who misdiagnosed the problem. Perez also successfully removed the worm then.

Videos of that surgery and Cordero's show how the worms attempted to wriggle away from Perez and his equipment, which used a vacuum-like effect to suck the worm out of the eye.

Both patients had no complications and the surgery did not affect their vision.

"When we hear hoof beats, we think of horses, not zebras," said Dr. Bernard Perez, Don Perez's brother and partner at the Perez Eye Center. "It takes a team who can think a little differently to find the answer sometimes. And that's what happened here."

Contact Justine Griffin at jgriffin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8467. Follow @SunBizGriffin.