Article content

Doctors had broken the disheartening news to Rachel Palma, explaining that the lesion on her brain was suspected to be a tumour, and her scans suggested that it was cancerous.

Palma, a newlywed entering a new chapter in her life, said she was in shock, unwilling to believe it was true.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Surgeons opened her skull to remove a cancer tumour — then they saw a tapeworm Back to video

In September, scrubbed-up surgeons in an operating room at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City opened Palma’s cranium and steeled themselves for a malignant brain tumour, said Jonathan Rasouli, chief neurosurgery resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. But instead, Rasouli said, they saw an encapsulated mass resembling a quail egg.

“We were all saying, ‘What is this?'” Rasouli recalled Thursday in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “It was very shocking. We were scratching our heads, surprised at what it looked like.”

The surgeons removed it from Palma’s brain and placed it under a microscope to get a closer look. Then they sliced into it — and found a baby tapeworm.