14 DAY TRIAL // Yet another bizarre medical case is here to seriously freak us out and send some people running for the hills, screaming. Not to beat about the bush, this scary tale is about an overly attached worm that lived inside a man's foot for about 4 years.
As if hearing about a worm that spent nearly half a decade nestled inside some guy's body weren't enough to turn folks into insomniacs for about a week, it appears that, when finally removed, the creature was found to measure about 1 meter (roughly 3 feet) in length.
The man had no idea the worm was living inside him
Information shared with the public by the doctors who handled this case says that the man, identified as a Sudanese migrant who arrived in Australia some 4 years ago, was utterly and completely oblivious to the fact that he had a worm living inside his foot.
Thus, the patient, whose identity has not yet been shared with the public, only booked an appointment with doctors at St. Vincent's Hospital in the city of Sydney after walking around for several months with a swollen and painful foot.
To figure out what was troubling him, doctors took X-ray images of his damaged leg. While inspecting them, Dr. Jonathan Darby, an infectious diseases expert, zoomed in on two pieces of curled-up parasitic worm. Of these pieces, one was at the center of the man's foot and another in his ankle.
What this means is that, at the time the man finally got around to asking for help, the worm was already dead inside his body. The reason his foot became swollen and painful was that the parasitic creature had started to decompose.
The patient got help and is now doing much better
Having discovered what the problem was, specialists operated on the man and managed to remove the worm from inside his foot. It is understood that, soon enough, the patient made a full recovery and is now leading a normal, happy life.
As for the parasite, specialists identified it as a guinea worm, DM informs. The species is native to Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana and Chad. Apparently, the parasite usually enters the body while still in its larval form. More precisely, people can be exposed to it when drinking contaminated water.
Once inside the human body, guinea worm gets comfy and can remain in the same place for several years in a row. Eventually, it either dies and begins to degenerate, or simply tries to free itself and begins poking through the flesh and skin, causing serious blisters and injuries.
“That whole process can take years. It can sit inside the human body alive for years or die, degenerate, and then cause problems in the area like it did for our patient,” Dr. Jonathan Darby with the St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney said in a statement.
