Life (Almost) Mimicking Fiction

Yesterday, I finished Rose Tremain's Music and Silence.  I was listening to it on audiobook, but in the end decided I was enjoying it so much I needed to read the written word too.  It's poetic, interesting, funny and has wonderful characterisation.  One of my all-time favourites.

Without spoiling the plot, there was a development towards the end which I thought might be far-fetched...until I read in the newspaper this morning about a woman from Derby who found that the headaches and scratching noise she was hearing was due to an infestation of flesh-eating maggots in her ear.  She had recently been on a holiday to Peru, remembered walking through a swarm of flies, and having extracted one from her ear, thought little more about it.  Unfortunately, its maggots turned out to be a rare sort that relished the flavour of living flesh.   It makes the incident in Music and Silence sound almost tame in comparison.