“Cacti people” unofficially called the rare medical phenomenon of parasitism (perhaps, symbiosis) of a cactus on a living person. A few similar examples are reported and special medspravochniki, and the press.
The most famous case is connected with the girl Narine from Yerevan. He was repeatedly written about in the Russian press. It all started with the fact that in 1995, Narine watered the flowers and accidentally pricked her hand on the cactus. Rana did not want to heal for a long time. Narine was lazy to go to the doctor, and a month later the tip of the spine appeared from the reddened place. Narine was then 18 years old and she did not yet know how much this infection would affect her life.
When Narine finally decided to go to the hospital, the doctors easily removed two strange thorns from the suppuration wound with tweezers. However, two days later new thorns began to grow in the same place.
“In world practice, it is not known a single case that plant cells have taken root and parasitized in the human or animal body,” says Tigran Davtyan, head of the department. Laboratory of immunology and virology of the research center “Armenika”. – We gave a few thorns from the patient’s body to the Institute of Botany, where it was proved that they are of vegetable origin. We even managed to determine the type of cactus – common tsereus. Such a cactus in Armenia is on the windowsill in every house! The cells from the Ayvazyan wound and the cells of this plant were identical!
Doctors did not come up with another way to remove the fistula surgically, until the cactus began to parasitize the entire body. After the operation, the wound healed and for four years did not remind the sufferer about himself.
But in 4 years the cactus again reminded of itself.
– My daughter could not recover from the shock for a long time, she looked at everything and felt her hand, she said: “Mom, I’m afraid they’ll come back, they’ll crawl again.” “Forget it, like a terrible dream,” I persuaded her, “recalled Anait, the mother of the girl. – But Narine has changed, become withdrawn, did not communicate with girlfriends, with guys. At the same time she did not betray her flowers – she always watered her in time, albeit with caution.
When her wrist began to turn red again, Narine said: “The mosquito bitten, and I combed it.” And parents readily believed in their daughter, fearing that the truth would prove too cruel. But then the girl’s entire forearm swelled, the pain became unbearable. And, at last, the skin was broken by a thorn – this time the size of a match.
“The fistula was formed in the zone where the tendons are located,” says Seet Ghazaryan, a surgeon at the medical center “Eribone”. – Narine clenched her hand in a fist, with the help of the muscles a new thorn was removed to the surface (there was no blood at all), and we removed it with tweezers. Before our eyes, every day from the patient’s hand, there were 70 to 100 spines out of the hand! Then we repeatedly removed them, but they appeared again – apparently, in the body of the girl there were 2-3 parasitic cells. Appealed to specialists from Russia, Armenia, France … And they argued that the problem here is not of a surgical, but of a microbiological nature.
Having studied the structure of large thorns, biologists concluded that this time they are not of vegetable origin: “As a result of the mutation, new, unknown cells – a kind of hybrid of man and plant” appeared.
In other words, Narine Ayvazyan gradually turned into a cactus.
Tigran Davtyan believes that such a metamorphosis warns about much of humanity: “With evolution and progress, our immune system suffers more and more, failures occur in it. And we are increasingly exposed to unknown parasites and viruses. ”
“Why was I even born?” – more and more often asked herself Narine in 2005, continuing to fight her own body – pulling out the thorns. And after she had a blood poisoning, Yerevan even heard rumors that the cactus girl had died. Later it turned out that she is alive, but already quite bad – for days on end she lies at home on the couch and does not want to see anyone: “Doctors still can not help her …”
More recent news about Narine and her health in the network could not be found.
This case of cactus parasites is not the only one. A similar story happened to a Japanese tourist who, traveling through the desert regions of the United States, pricked himself about a cactus, and after a while he already had spines in his body.
In another case, which occurred in Russia, the newspapers also wrote briefly, but this time they did not even mention the patient’s name.
Logically, the “people-cacti” should be the most exactly where these plants grow in large numbers (the US, Mexico, and other countries of Latin America), but nothing similar is known about the local people.
