Rugby player Sam Ballard was drinking at a friend’s house when they spotted the creepy crawly slithering across the patio – unaware it was carrying a deadly infection
A teenager was left paralysed and suffered a horrific death after eating a slug for a dare at a birthday party.
Promising young rugby player Sam Ballard, from Sydney in Australia, was drinking at a friend’s house when they spotted the creepy crawly on the patio. The then 19-year-old ate the slug after being egged on by his mates – unaware it was infected with the deadly rat lungworm disease.
Typically found in rodents, the parasite passes its larvae into the animals’ faeces which can then spread to snails and slugs. Sam didn’t become ill immediately, but complained of serious pains in his legs in the days after the party in 2010.
He was concerned it might have been a consequence of eating the slug, but his mum told him that “no one gets sick from that”. Sam eventually contracted a brain infection and lapsed into a coma for 420 days before doctors were able to revive him. He was paralysed from the neck down after waking up and suffered seizures, struggled to regulate his body temperature, and had to be tube fed. He passed away at the age of 28 in 2018, “surrounded by his family and loyal, loving mates”.
Describing the night of the party in 2010, his friend Jimmy previously told The Project: “We were sitting, having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown-ups and a slug came crawling across. The conversation came up, ‘Should I eat it?’ Off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened.”
Another friend, Michael Sheasby, described seeing Sam for the first time in hospital after the party. He said: “When I walked in, he was very very gaunt, and there were cables everywhere – it was a big shock.” Sam’s heartbreaking final words to his mum Katie were “I love you”.
Despite the consequences it had on her family, she doesn’t blame his friends for the dare and said they were just “being mates”. After his initial release from hospital, Katie wrote on Facebook that her son was “still the same cheeky Sam, and laughs a lot”. However she admitted that “it’s devastated, changed his life forever, changed my life forever. It’s huge. The impact is huge.”
She spent the final years of his life fighting for adequate care for Sam. The Australian government initially provided the equivalent of £234,000 under its disability insurance scheme, which was reviewed in 2017 and cut by over 50 percent. Sam’s family and friends fought for additional funding, and the decision was ultimately reversed.