Its hard to think that there is anything nastier than having your body invaded by another creature ....
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| Worse Than A Tapeworm .... But Not Much! |
....a fact that many horror movies are based upon, including of course it being the famous premise of the movie 'Alien', where a creature emerges from a crewman's stomach.
So although we haven't come across an alien who exhibits this trait, we do have a few nasties on the earth who do. Perhaps the best known of these is the dreaded tapeworm!
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| Not A Tapeworm .... |
So when in February 2021, a 79 year old Thai man started complaining of stomach pains he was given a gastroscopy (a camera inserted down his throat) before a planned surgery. But imagine the operating staffs horror when as the camera was withdrawn, it was found that a tapeworm had attached itself to the camera and wouldn't let go.
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| A Tapeworm - Not What You Want Inside You! |
The surgeon kept pulling and pulling and eventually a 6.5ft (2m) worm was removed from the mans intestines .... a salutary lesson against eating uncooked pork, beef or buffalo meat.
Mean while in Japan, a young woman who went to the doctors complaining about a
twitchy tonsil. Her doctor examined her throat and found a live, 1.5
inch (3.8cm) worm buried in her tonsils. He safely removed it. She had
eaten Sashimi (fresh raw fish or raw meat sliced into thin pieces) five days before going to the doctors.
In point of fact, Thailand can be a dangerous place for critters attaching themselves to humans, even if you don't eat uncooked meat products. Teenager Siraphop Masukarat was watching videos whilst sitting on the toilet (as you do when your a teenager!), in Nonthaburi when he felt a searing pain on his man worm.
He leapt up, to find a 4 ft (1.2m) python snake hanging grimly on to his penis. "I stood up, which pulled the snake with me," he said. "I ran out, knocking the snake down by shutting the door" ... he had a lucky escape, but still needed four stitches.
Update: In March 2021 Thailand's Parasitic Disease Research Centre reported finding a 60 foot (18m) long tapeworm in a male patient in Nong Khai. He had submitted a faecal sample to a mobile test centre which identified indicators that he had indeed got a tape worm. They administered medication that forced the beast to leave the mans body, and when measures it was found to be the largest extracted in 50 years. Tapeworms can live as long as 30 years inside a human host however advances in medication now make this an unlikely scenario in most locations. The man admitted to recently eating uncooked beef which is the likely source of the infection.
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