Doctors in Vietnam reported a patient’s horrific experience of having a 2-foot eel chew through his intestines after he reportedly inserted it into his anus. Surgeons were able to save the man’s life and extract the eel, though not without removing part of his colon as well. It’s a bizarre real-world incident that reads like the trailer for the upcoming Alien: Romulus movie.
Viet Duc University Hospital in Hanoi reported the body horror tale late last month. On July 27, a 31-year-old man, originally from India, visited the emergency department with severe abdominal pain. According to the hospital, the man soon admitted that he had willingly stuck a large eel up through his anus.
He was quickly given imaging tests, which confirmed the eel’s presence, and then prepped for a colonoscopy to remove it rectally. But the doctors discovered a complication: The man had also inserted a lemon into his anus, seemingly to ensure that the eel wouldn’t wriggle out the way it came. The man’s pain continued to grow worse, prompting the medical team to perform emergency abdominal surgery to retrieve the eel from the other end.
Once the man was opened up, the team found that the hefty eel (two feet long and about four inches in diameter) had reached his abdominal cavity by biting through his colon. The doctors were able to pull out the eel, pop free the lemon, and close up the gaping hole in the man’s colon without much trouble. But feces had already spilled into the man’s abdom.