An American Bloke Who Ate Sushi Every Day Ended Up With A Five Foot Tapeworm

A bloke in America has paid for his daily sushi diet with a tapeworm that measured five feet long.

The bloke rocked up to a hospital in California with the worm in a bag wrapped around a toilet roll, asking for help in dealing with a worm.

“Apparently it was still wriggling when he put it in the bag,” Fresno emergency department doctor Kenny Banh told the Guardian.

“But it had died in transit.”

The patient told the doctor that he’d had a bout of bloody diarrhoea and had initially thought part of his intestine was hanging out of him.

But when he pulled on it and it kept coming, he realised it was still alive.

When Banh unraveled the worm it measured 5ft 6in long.

The patient was given a de-worming pill similar to those given to pets.

“He said he’d felt like something was moving around in his guts and he thought it was just gas,” Banh said of the patient.

“He’d been in discomfort for a few months.”

The sushi the bloke ate is thought to have been the reason for the parasite, with larvae of tapeworms being found in salmon in the Pacific Ocean.

Cooking or freezing kills the parasites, but it may survive in poorly prepared sushi.