COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two weeks after Jaysen Carr spent the Fourth of July swimming and riding on a boat on one of South Carolina’s most popular lakes, he was dead from an amoeba that lives in the warm water and entered his brain through his nose.
His parents had no clue the brain-eating amoeba, whose scientific name is Naegleria fowleri, even existed in Lake Murray, just 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of Columbia.
They found out when a doctor, in tears, told them the diagnosis after what seemed like a fairly regular headache and nausea took a serious turn.
Jaysen, 12, fought for a week before dying on July 18, making him one of about 160 people known to have died from the amoeba in the U.S. in the past 60 years.
As they grieve their son, the boy’s parents said they were stunned to learn South Carolina, like most other U.S. states, has no law requiring public reporting of deaths or infections from the amoeba. The lake wasn’t closed and no water testing was performed. If they hadn’t spoken up, they wonder if anyone would have even known what happened.
”I can’t believe we don’t have our son. The result of him being a child was losing his life. That does not sit well. And I am terrified it will happen to someone else,” Clarence Carr told The Associated Press as his wife sat beside him, hugging a stuffed tiger that had a recording of their middle child’s heartbeat.
The best Fourth of July ever
Jaysen loved sports. He played football and baseball. He loved people, too. As soon as he met you, he was your friend, his father said. He was smart enough to have skipped a grade in school and to play several instruments in his middle school band in Columbia.
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