A silly dare between friends ended in eventual tragedy after a teenager was goaded by his pals to eat a slug.
The initial dare occurred back in 2010, when Sam Ballard was just 19 years old. He had been drinking wine with friends in his garden, when some of them noticed the slug and goaded the then-teenager into eating it.
"We were sitting over here having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown up and a slug came crawling across here," Jimmy Galvin, one of Ballard's closest friends, told Australian outlet The Project.
"The conversation came up, you know. ‘Should I eat it?’ And off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened."
Very shortly after, though, Ballard realized he had made a grave mistake.
In the days following that fateful evening, Ballard - who was a keen rugby player - started experiencing serious pain in his legs. He told his mother about what he was experiencing, and even expressed concern that the pain might have been caused by eating the slug, but she told him that "no one gets sick from that".
After a visit to the doctor, the young man was worried that he might be developing MS (as his father suffers from the condition), but that was quickly ruled out.
Eventually, it was determined that Ballard had been infected by the parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis - a worm that is most commonly found in rodents, but can be present in slugs or snails if they eat rat feces.
This led to him contracting a strand of meningitis called eosinophilic meningoencephalitis, which many people usually recover from.
Tragically, though, Ballard's condition only deteriorated further.
Rather than being able to recover from his illness, Ballard fell into a coma for 420 days, during which time he developed brain damage.
When he awoke, he had lost a great deal of his faculties. He was left paralyzed and needed help eating and using the bathroom for the remainder of his life.
Even so, his mother, Katie Ballard, maintains that he still understood "everything", and his friends were still able to see the Sam they once knew in the man.
Galvin recalled that he once apologized to Ballard for not stopping him on the night he ate the slug, at which point Ballard broke down in tears.
In a special news report following Sam's tragic death in 2018, Lisa Wilkinson spoke about the former rugby player's experience.
"We have some sad news for you now," she said at the time. "Earlier this year we brought you the story of Sam Ballard who, on a dare from his mates, ate a slug. He contracted rat lung disease with devastating effects.
"His friends have stuck by him ever since. On Friday, Sam passed away, surrounded by his family and loyal, loving mates.
"His last words to his mom: ‘I love you’."
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph in Australia, mom Katie revealed that she doesn't hold any blame over her son's friends for the dare - saying Sam and his pals were just "being mates".
We can only hope that others can learn from Sam's story and be more careful when participating in dares or activities that could potentially be life-threatening.
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