After living with foot pain for a year, a Sudanese man living in Melbourne, Australia, finally visited a doctor when his foot became swollen. Turns out, he had been living with a tapeworm in his body since before he moved from Sudan to Australia four years ago. Yes, you read that right–a tapeworm in his foot!
__Read more ¿Qué más?: Allergic reaction causes girl to burn alive from the inside out
__
Man had one metre African tapeworm in his foot http://t.co/tB9o82DuK9 pic.twitter.com/ncfffDQtzN
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) December 11, 2014
The three-foot-long African guinea worm had apparently died inside the man's body and began to disintegrate, which according to doctors, is when problems typically arise. Since this type of worm is native to the man's home country which he had not been back to in a number of years, it's clear that the creature had been residing inside of him for at least as long. Pieces of the dead worm were found curled up in the man's heel and near the sole of his foot.
Making the case even stranger is the fact that these types of worms are normally ingested via food or water and therefore end up somewhere in the digestive tract. How the heck did it end up in his foot? Could that mean the worm had been making its way through the man's body for the past four years? Ick!
Much of the time, these types of worms enter the body during the larvae stage and mature in the body before burrowing through the flesh and exiting the body through a blister. They can even lay more eggs in the body once they mature. There is no treatment for guinea worm disease which may go completely unnoticed, or cause symptoms such as digestive distress, swelling, nausea, fatigue, hunger or lack of appetite and weight loss among other symptoms. These symptoms typically disappear completely once the worm exits or is removed from the body.
Image via Thinkstock
