SC Boy, 12, Dies From Brain-Eating Amoeba

Two weeks after Jaysen Carr spent the Fourth of July 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 clue the brain-eating amoeba, whose scientific name is Naegleria fowleri, even existed in Lake Murray, just 15 miles west of Columbia, the AP reports. They found out when a doctor, in tears, 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 wasn't closed and no water testing was performed. If they hadn't spoken up, they wonder if anyone would have even known what happened.
• Jaysen loved sports. He played football and baseball. He loved people, too. As soon as he met you, he was your friend, his father says. He was smart enough to have skipped a grade in school and to play several instruments in his middle school band in Columbia.
• Friends invited Jaysen and his family for the Fourth of July holiday weekend on the lake, where Jaysen spent hours swimming, fishing, and riding on an inner tube that was being pulled by a boat. "Mom and Dad, that was the best Fourth of July I've ever had," Clarence Carr remembered his son telling him.
• A few days later, Jaysen's head started to hurt. Pain relievers helped. But the next day the headache got worse and he started throwing up. He told the emergency room doctors exactly where he was hurting. But soon he started to get disoriented and lethargic. The amoeba was in his brain, already causing an infection and destroying brain tissue. It entered through his nose as water was forced deep into his nasal passages, possibly from one of the times Jaysen jumped into the water. It then traveled along his olfactory nerve into his brain.

• The amoeba caused an infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis. Fewer than 10 people a year get it in the US, and over 95% of them die. The last death from the amoeba in South Carolina was in 2016, according to the CDC. The amoeba is fairly common, and researchers are still trying to figure out why the infections are so rare,
• "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 tells the AP.