North Carolina teen critically ill from rare brain-eating amoeba

In the waning days of summer, when warm water and human joy converge, a North Carolina teenager lies critically ill — struck by one of nature's rarest and most unforgiving agents. Naegleria fowleri, a microscopic amoeba that enters through the nose and consumes the brain, claims fewer than ten lives in the United States each year, yet its precision is absolute: once symptoms emerge, the window of survival is measured in days. This case, arriving weeks after an 8-year-old girl in Louisiana died from the same organism, reminds us that the places where we seek relief and delight are not without t