An Australian immigrant is literally jumping for joy these days after doctors at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne were finally able to find and cure the source of his chronically painful foot.
Warning. When you see what it is, you might gag a little bit. This is not for the squeamish.
The man is an African immigrant who came to Australia from Sudan about 4 years ago. He had been complaining about foot pain for about a year. Initially doctors thought it was an infection, but they took an x-ray anyway. That’s when they found this.
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Instead of an infection, the man actually had a parasite known as a “guinea worm,” living inside him. You can catch a guinea worm by drinking water infected with its larvae. Likely the worm had been living inside him since before he left for Australia. In this x-ray you can see that the worm is in two pieces here. Somehow it died in the man’s body, and was starting decompose.
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Luckily, doctors recognized the parasite and quickly sent him into surgery. The surgeons removed the pieces of the worm from his foot. He has since made a full recovery.
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Trust me when I say that you shouldn’t Google guinea worm. They’re nasty parasites that can grow up to three feet long inside a person’s body before trying to break through the skin of the feet and escape. No thank you.
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H/T: The Independent
Seriously. Don’t make the same mistake I did, and Google “guinea worm.” I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee those pictures. Lucky for us, humans are the only known animal that the guinea worms infect. Dracunculiasis, also called guinea worm disease, isn’t deadly. It is, however, disgusting.
A person becomes infected with GWD when they drink water that contains water fleas infected with guinea worm larvae. Initially, there are no symptos of Dracunculiasis. About one year later, the infected person develops a painful burning sensation on one of their lower limbs. That means the female worm is attempting to work its way out of the body, now that it has grown to its adult size.
Start wearing shoes everywhere.
