"When he pulls it out, it starts wriggling in his hands,” Dr. Kenny Bahn told InsideEdition.com.
A California man with a love for sushi had his appetite for raw fish ruined when a trip to the bathroom led to the discovery of a giant tapeworm.
Dr. Kenny Bahn was making his rounds at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno when a 30-year-old man came in with a case of bloody diarrhea.
“I walk up and say, 'What brings you in here today?' and he says, ‘I want to get treated for worms,’” Bahn told InsideEdition.com. “[He said] ‘I was having some abdominal cramping and... after I had a bout of bloody diarrhea, I saw a little piece of what I thought was my intestine hanging out.’”
It wasn’t his intestine, but the discovery was still very concerning for the man, who told Bahn he tried to remove the string-like material and was stunned to find how long it was.
“When he pulls it out, it starts wriggling in his hands,” Bahn said. “It starts moving, and he's like, 'Oh my God.' Then he knew it was a worm. And just sort of like dropped it, like on the bathroom floor, but it was still coming out of him.”
The man brought the tapeworm with him to the hospital, where Bahn got a chance to see first-hand what his patient had dealt with.
“I take out some paper towels and I just unravel the worm and start measuring it out with a clipboard, like a foot long clipboard, I’m like, oh, it’s about 5 and a half feet long,” Bahn said.
The man told Bahn he ate raw salmon on an almost daily basis.
His case comes as the Centers for Disease Control noted an outbreak of Japanese tapeworms in Pacific-caught salmon. Bahn prescribed de-worming medication to the man, who went home resolved to stay away from salmon.
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