Rugby player who swallowed garden slug as dare fights Australia government over health bills
Sam Ballard (right) now needs 24/7 care from his mother Katie (left) and family after swallowing a garden slug as a dare and developing eosinophilic meningoencephalitis. They are in debt after the Australian government slashed funding. (News Corp Australia) In 2010 at a friend’s party, strapping 19-year-old rugby player Sam Ballard swallowed a garden slug as a dare. A group of young friends was sitting around at a table drinking red wine when a slug was produced and one of them said: “Eat it, I dare you”. Ballard swallowed the slug. Prior to this, Ballard’s mother Katie had thought her son as a “larrikin” (hooligan) but “invincible,” that nothing could ever happen to him. Sam Ballard was a strapping rugby player before the devastating effects of the infection from a garden slug. She described him as “my rough-and-tumble Sam.” But the teenager’s life was to take a devastating turn. Ballard,...