A California man who regularly used to eat salmon sashimi now swears to lay off raw fish after pulling a tapeworm out of his body that was nearly as long as he was tall.
According to emergency room doctor Kenny Banh, the incident which happened two months ago while he was working in an emergency room in Fresno.
A young man came in, saying he had bloody diarrhea and wanted to be treated for worms.
The doctor was initially somewhat skeptical that the man actually had worms, but his curiosity was piqued when he saw a small plastic bag next to the patient.
On asking the patient what it was he said it was the worm
The story, which originally appeared in The HuffPost, saw Banh saying, “I open it up and I take out a toilet paper roll ... and wrapped around it is of course this giant, long, what looks like a flat tapeworm.”
The patient reported that he had abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea before seeing part of the worm hanging out of his body while on the toilet, Banh said. He started pulling on the long, stringy item until it was all the way out.
The patient was actually relieved that it was a tapeworm and not his organs spilling out of his body. But he was understandably curious about where the worm came from.
The doctor went on to question the man about possible risk factors and the man said he loved sushi and consumed raw salmon almost everyday.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most common tapeworm to infect humans is Diphyllobothrium latum. People become infected after eating certain types of raw or undercooked fish, including salmon.
Properly cooking the fish — or, in the case of sushi, flash-freezing it at a low enough temperature — kills these worms. The CDC notes that most cases are asymptomatic, though infection can cause symptoms like abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting and even vitamin B12 deficiency and anemia.
According to Banh, the worm had most likely been growing inside the man’s body for about six months. According to Banh the ordeal made the patient swear off sushi for good.
