Fly discovered in man’s colon shocks doctors: ‘This is just unheard of’
To be a fly on the intestinal wall.
A routine cancer checkup took a revolting turn after medics discovered a fully intact fly in a man’s colon while conducting a colonoscopy, per a skin-crawling study published in the American Journal Of Gastroenterology.
“This case represents a very rare colonoscopic finding,” researchers wrote while describing the literal stomach bug, which occurred at the University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia, Missouri.
The 63-year-old patient had reportedly gone in for a colonoscopy at the request of his primary care physician.
However, as doctors probed his large intestine with a camera, they found the digestive organ had become a veritable intestinal insectarium.
It was reportedly located in the traverse colon, the portion that’s located right under the liver.
It remains unclear how the insect infiltrated the human fly strip in the first place.
The patient recalled eating pizza and lettuce — but no shoofly pie — just two days before the procedure but still could not explain the fly’s presence, per the study.
Doctors were flabbergasted over the find.
“Having such an intact fly like this is just unheard of,” Dr. Matthew Bechtold, a gastroenterologist at the University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia who performed the procedure, told Business Insider.
He said it was the first time he’d seen such a perfectly preserved specimen during his 20 years in the profession.
They also found it remarkable that the intestinal interloper didn’t get flushed during pre-colonoscopy detox, which involves consuming only clear fluids and laxatives the day prior to the procedure.
Speaking of insects infiltrating unlikely orifices, a 64-year-old woman in Taiwan experienced every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare in April when doctors found a spider scuttling about in her ear canal.
Inanimate objects have found their way into some unusual places as well of late.
Earlier this month, a man in Vietnam learned that his severe headaches were caused by a pair of chopsticks that had been lodged in his skull for five months.
