A man in China was hospitalized and left fighting for his life after inserting a live eel in his rectum in a desperate attempt to treat constipation with the help of a traditional home remedy.
According to the reports, the unnamed man, who is believed to be in his 50s, tried to get rid of his bowel problems by inserting a 16-inch eel in his backside.
Following more than a week after the eel ruptured his intestines and got stuck in his abdomen, the man sought help from the local hospital where he reported feeling severe abdominal pain.
“We suspected that there was a foreign object in his abdominal cavity from a CT scan. But we couldn’t tell where it came from,” Huangjiang Hospital’s Dr. Li allegedly said.
During an emergency operation, the doctors were able to locate the eel, which was already dead at the time, and remove it from the patient’s abdomen.
“During the laparoscopy procedure, we detected that it was an eel. It had completely entered the abdominal cavity and already been dead,” the doctor added.
As the doctor confirmed, the patient’s condition was life-threatening whereas infection that could end his life if he didn’t seek medical help in time was present in his belly.
Following the procedure, the man finally admitted he stuck the eel in his backside in an attempt to cure constipation.
Previously, in an unrelated incident, another man was hospitalized and left fighting for his life after inserting a 20-inch live eel inside his anus believing it will help him get rid of constipation.
49-year-old Liu from Guangzhou, China, has allegedly heard of a folklore method to remove constipation and went straight for it without a second doubt when he experienced digestion problems.
And so, the man inserted a large live eel inside his anus, believing that the animal would free him of constipation. On the contrary, however, the eel nearly ended the man’s life by rupturing his intestines and the stomach.
“We opened up his stomach and saw the eel amongst his feces and food debris. He also suffered a punctured pancreas,” Dr. Zhao Zhirong, the doctor responsible for treating the patient, said.
As he also revealed, the eel was nearly 20 inches long and 1.2-inch thick.
“Asian swamp eels have a scale-less and slender body allowing them to move in waves and burrow efficiently. Their teeth appear like bristles and they have one V-shaped gill located beneath the head,” the doctor added.
“When we asked the patient after surgery, he said the eel swam up by itself. But he later admitted that he put it there himself while following a folk remedy for bowel obstruction.”
Following the incident, the doctor told the man he was lucky to be alive. If he was admitted into the hospital just moments later, he could easily succumb to the internal wounds caused by the eel.
Dr. Zhirong also urged people to seek proper medical attention before resorting to folklore methods to treat their conditions.
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Replaced!