Woman finds leech in her nose after Asia trip

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Daniela Liverani, of Edinburgh, Scotland, came home from a trip to Vietnam with an unpleasant souvenir up her nose.

The 24-year-old backpacker suffered frequent nosebleeds after a motorcycle accident, and assumed that a dark protrusion sticking out of her nostril was congealed blood.

"When I was in the shower, he would come right out as far as my bottom lip and I could see him sticking out the bottom of my nose," Liverani told The Daily Mail on Sunday. "So when that happened, I jumped out of the shower to look really closely in the mirror and I saw ridges on him. That's when I realized he was an animal."

Liverani rushed to the hospital, where doctors spent half an hour pulling a three-inch leech out of her nose.

"It was agony -- whenever the doctor grabbed him, I could feel the leech tugging at the inside of my nose," she said.

A doctor told Liverani that the leech -- which she could have picked up while swimming in Vietnam -- might have eventually made its way into her brain.