With clock ticking, doctors, pharmacists come to the rescue after 1-year-old eats raccoon feces

A southern Alberta couple who realized their infant had eaten raccoon feces found themselves racing against time to find a rare medication and doctors and pharmacists across Western Canada mobilized to help them find it.

Ashley Haughton learned raccoon scatcan be extremely dangerous when she found it in her yard in Lethbridge, Alta., and researched how to dispose of it safely.

Raccoons can carry a deadly form of roundworm called Baylisascaris procyonis, and the eggs live in their feces.

An extremely rare parasitic infection can occur if humans ingest the eggs, which hatch into larvae, travel through the bodyand invade organs, including the eyes and brain.

And sowhen her one-year-old son ate raccoon feces from a flower pot in the garden just over four weeks ago, Haughtonknew to be alarmed: Symptoms of the infection include brain damage, blindness and coma.

It can also be deadly.

"They go through the stomach barrier, they infest your body ... and essentially eat you from the inside out," Jon Martin, the boy's father, told Calgary Eyeopener, a CBC Radio morning show, on Thursday.

"And if you don't treat them quickly enough, there isn't really a way to reverse the effects, because they've literally eaten your tissue."

Health Canada gave special authorization

Martin and Haughton immediatelycalledtheir familydoctor and the province's Poison &Drug Information Service.

Both advised the parents to wait and see if their son whom they didn't want to name in order to protect his privacy developed symptoms of infection.

Instead, the parents sought to have thefeces tested for roundworm, and their veterinarian confirmed the worst: The sample was infested with so many eggs and larvae that they were unable to count them all.

After rushingtheir son to a hospital emergency room, they were prescribedalbendazole,which needs to be taken within three days of exposure.

Special authorization to write the prescription was given by Health Canada, as itsmanufacturerhas not filed a drug submission in Canada, the departmenttold CBC News.

Thissignalledthe delays to come.

"We started calling around ... to try and track it downand then soon realized that it wasn't available commonly at all," Martin said.

'I couldn't imagine being in that situation'

When Lethbridge pharmacist Bryce Barrygot the call that Martin was looking foralbendazoleand why, he immediately understood thedire predicament.

"I've got young kids, and I couldn't imagine being in that situation," said Barry, who works at Shoppers Drug Mart inPark Place Mall.

But when he checked his suppliers, Barry realized he couldn't bring in the medication to his pharmacy. And when he discovered it's not commercially available in Canada, hestarted contacting his network.

When a drug is not widely available, acompounding pharmacy can prepare personalized medications for patients by mixing individual ingredients together in the exact strength and dosage required.

Barry's friend, Dawson Bremner,had opened a pharmacy in Vancouver thathad many suppliers outside of Canadaand was doing a lot of compounding and might be able to order, or make, albendazole.

Bremner couldn't do either, but instead he contacted his pharmaceutical representative, who mass-emailed clients across Western Canada.

Script Pharmacy in Calgary responded.

It had not compounded the anti-parasitic formula in more thana decade, but it had the medication and the ingredients needed to make it into a palatable liquid.

"When we first got that email ... my technician took it very seriously," said Scriptco-owner and pharmacist AleemDatoo.

"[But] I don't think we had the full sense of how [serious] the situation was until a few weeks later, when our provincial college called and verified that [the feces] did have this certain parasite.

"That's when we really fully appreciated what had been done but on our end, it had been a total team effort."

Martin andHaughton, meanwhile, were preparingto drive to Montana to get the drug when theylearned the Calgary pharmacy could make it.

"It was one of the happiest phone calls I think you can get in a situation like this," Martin said.

"I mean, I kind of had a breakdown on the phone."

'Everybody came together'

Fifty-six hours after ingesting raccoon feces,Martin andHaughton'sson received his first dose ofalbendazole.

And from the hospital doctors to theveterinarian to a chain of pharmacists,the collaboration between so many people to acquire the drug struck Barry as incredible.

"Everybody came together, and some of us had pretty small parts ... but we were proud to get it in time," Barry said. "And I thought it was pretty neat."

Since Martin andHaughton'sson was exposed to roundworm four weeks ago, itmeans he is outside of the usual window for symptoms of infection to appear.

And according to Martin, he seems just fine.

"He's still doing all the wonderful things that the toddler is supposed to do," Martin said. "You can't really ask for much more."