Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Doctors Found Dead Worm in His Brain That 'Ate a Portion of It'
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is revealing a startling apparent diagnosis.
The 70-year-old politician and U.S. presidential candidate, who is married to Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Cheryl Hines, said a health problem he had in 2010 was caused by “a worm that got into my brain and ate a potion of it and then died,” via the New York Times.
He reportedly said those words in a divorce case deposition from 2012 that the New York Times obtained.
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Two years before the deposition, Kennedy reportedly experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor.”
Neurologists who treated his uncle, Ted Kennedy, before his death due to brain cancer in 2009, told him he had a dark spot on his brain scans, and concluded he also had a tumor. But a doctor at New York-Presbyterian hospital suggested another explanation: a parasite.
In the 2012 deposition, Kennedy reportedly said: “I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
Doctors eventually decided that the spot on Kennedy’s brain was the result of a parasite, according to the report. The Times said experts who did not treat Kennedy thought the parasite “was likely a pork tapeworm larva.”
“Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems,” the Times said. “Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, which causes inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.”
In a recent interview, via the NYT, Kennedy said he had recovered from such problems.
The 2012 deposition the Times obtained was given during Kennedy’s divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. For more, head to NYTimes.com.