- Want to start feeling incredibly paranoid? Just keep reading.
Wherever you go, you’re never alone. There are countless creatures living inside your body, from bacteria to facial mites.
The thing is, though, they’re all more or less supposed to be there. Even most of the common harmful parasites are merciful in the sense that we know where they’ll go and what they’ll do.
But then there are the other things. Living things that occasionally find their way into the human body — and continue to live.
Here are seven things that were found alive inside people who were also alive, much to their horror.
1) The Growing Guava
In 2011, a Taiwanese man went to see a dentist due to a horrendous toothache. By his own admission, he wasn’t very fastidious about brushing his teeth, so he figured he had a bad cavity.
But it was much more than that. The man’s tooth had such a massive cavity in it that a guava seed had managed to lodge itself inside the tooth.
Not only that, the decaying, rotten tooth was apparently fertile ground for the seed. It had sprouted and started growing in the man’s tooth.
The dentist pulled the unsalvageable tooth but then, rather unprofessionally, he called his entire practice to come and gawk at the bizarre thing. The man, embarrassed, left the clinic in a hurry.
2) The Souvenir in the Knee
In 2013, then-4-year-old Paul Franklin was enjoying a beach with his family when he fell and scraped his knee. His mother slapped a band-aid on the scratch and the boy went on playing.
But a few weeks later, a strange bump grew on Paul’s knee. Doctors prescribed the boy antibiotics and told his parents not to mess with the bump.
Against the doctors’ wishes, though, Paul’s mom inspected the wound and saw a black thing inside it. Thinking it was just a rock, she decided to squeeze it out.
It came out, but it wasn’t a rock. It was a still-living carnivorous sea snail that had survived by feasting on Paul’s knee.
Paul was absolutely horrified. Nah, just kidding — he kept the snail as a pet and named it Turbo.
3) The Moving Mole (That Wasn’t a Mole)
An elderly woman came to see New York dermatologist Joshua Zeichner. She had noticed a moving, shape-changing mole on her skin.
That’s bad news — traveling moles are one of the most obvious signs of skin cancer. But upon closer inspection, Zeichner told the woman she didn’t have cancer.
The “mole” was actually a tick that had somehow burrowed under the woman’s skin. We suppose that’s still better than a cancer diagnosis.
4) Stomach Problems
During a 2014 trip to Bali, Australian Dylan Maxwell noticed a strange problem. A red line started stretching its way up toward his chest from an appendix scar on his stomach.
Maxwell visited a hospital, where the doctors assumed he’d been bit by some bug. They gave him antihistamines for the allergic reactions and sent him on his way.
But when the drugs didn’t work, Maxwell returned to the hospital. The doctors determined that he had been indeed been bitten by a bug.
A spider had managed to enter Maxwell’s body through his scar and was now crawling around under his skin. The worst part may be that Maxwell had to fly back to Australia before anyone could remove the spider.
5) Scratching in Her Skull
You’ve probably heard of people finding roaches in their ears. This one’s much worse.
In 2017, an Indian woman went to see a doctor because of a burning, “crawling” sensation inside her head. Most people would probably think the woman had gone a bit loopy, but the doctors ran proper tests on her.
They discovered a living cockroach inside her skull. Apparently, the pest had crawled into the woman’s nostril and squirmed its way into her head.
And the best part? The doctors noted that the cockroach “didn’t want to come out.”
6) Always on His Mind
In 2010, a 50-year-old Chinese man checked into a UK hospital, complaining about severe headaches, detecting weird smells, and having bizarre memory flashbacks. The doctors gave him an MRI scan and noticed an “abnormality” but couldn’t do much about it.
The man’s strange symptoms continued over the next four years. Only then did doctors finally discover the problem.
There was a worm in his brain.
They pulled out a living, rare tapeworm out of the man’s skull. All the bizarre symptoms he experienced were caused by the worm triggering different areas of his brain as it crawled around.
7) I’ve Got a Brother in Me
Sanju Bhagat, from India, had always been built weirdly. His stomach was strangely bulbous, but he never gave it much thought.
In 1999, his stomach hardened and he began having trouble breathing. At a hospital, the doctors figured he had been carrying a massive stomach tumor all his life and decided to remove it.
But when they cut Bhagat open, they didn’t find a tumor. They discovered bones, half-formed limbs, hair, jaws, and deformed genitalia.
The doctors pulled Bhagat’s sibling out of his stomach. As a fetus in his mother’s womb, Bhagat had absorbed his twin who had continued to develop inside his stomach.
And the twin was technically still alive when the doctors removed it.
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