Some fungi have emerged as recent threats to human health, causing problems that are hard to diagnose and hard to treat
“We were on this very, very dusty road for a long time,” Bottenus remembers of a ride to Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula. “It was a dirty, sandy, hard-packed road.” While going downhill, Bottenus crashed, badly scraping his elbow. The next morning, a doctor spent about an hour picking out little rocks and cleaning dirt from the wound before she bandaged it up. The injury kept him from swimming but otherwise didn’t disrupt the trip.
About a month after returning to Rhode Island, Bottenus started having headaches. He couldn’t control his mouth properly — his speech was off, and he was drooling. Eventually his doctor ordered an MRI, which revealed a lesion in his brain. “My first thought was, I must have some sort of cancer,” he says. “I’m only 31…. I’m way too young for this.”
