lunchtime poll

Let's say you found out you had a tapeworm. [*]  Let's say the doctor gave you some pills to kill it, and in due course, this giant thing came out of your butt.

[ LJ Poll 874397 ]

[*] No, I'm not the one who has one.

Tags: , ,

44 Responses:

  1. pete23 says:

    Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, I presume?

  2. boggyb says:

    Charming[/sarcasm]

  3. pozorvlak says:

    You see, this is why people need camera phones. That story is incomplete without, at minimum, a picture of the tapeworm taken prior to flushing.

  4. violentbloom says:

    [*]Yes, I am the one who has one.

    So what's it worth to you?
    If you put the blacklights back in the DNA...perhaps I could manage to pull the damn thing out of my ass and put it in a jar for you. But I think it should go on your mantle not mine.

    And you know I was trying to happily be in denial about this.

  5. revsphynx says:

    If your (ahem) friend saves it and wants to sell it, I know several sideshow owners that may be interested.

  6. taffer says:

    Saving it in a sample jar would be fucking awesome, but:

    • cleaning it off would suck, I assume
    • my wife would kill me

    Shouldn't there be a third option for "leave it where it is so I can get that heroin chic look I've always wanted"? :-\

    • It would be a crappy memento.

      • greyface says:

        If I wasn't terribly disgusted by the tapeworm, I'd be disgusted by your pun.

      • chaoset says:

        That is a terrible and awesome pun, but it still doesn't top my favourite, which I can never remember properly. It came from my dad (a mormon and an anthropology professor) and he somehow connected the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway and the cult leader and serendipity.

    • > "leave it where it is so I can get that heroin chic look I've always wanted"

      It's like pushing it back or swallowing? However neither way won't work, I suppose.

    • violentbloom says:

      You know the sad thing is that I have had that thought.
      Thing is every single person on both sides of my family are obese. Except me. Also everyone on my mother's side has diabetes.
      Except me. So that really does make me wonder.

      I'd rather prefer not to join them. And sure I have a completely different diet that is much healthier. But I'm used to eating whatever I want without getting fat.

      Also you know I wouldn't have to deal with the removal process.

      I'm really hoping for the fourth item which is, I have the antigen for it but there's nothing there. That's probably too much to hope for but...

      And also the roundworms are a lot more frightening as they can burrow through your organs.

      • taffer says:

        Parasites generally freak me the hell right out. One of my university roommates was a bio major, and he had a text book with a (large-ish) chapter devoted to parasites.

        With far too many pictures.

        The one that got me the most was a dissection of a woman's brain; she was infested with a parasite that normally stays in your muscles, but they'd somehow made it past the blood/brain barrier. Hundreds of these little bastards chewing out cysts inside her brain... *shudder*

        Hopefully you've just got a faster metabolism than the rest of your family (certainly possible, genetics is pretty random sometimes) and the tape worm is just incidental. ;-)

        • moof says:

          If you're in Tokyo, I recommend going to the Meguro Parasitological Museum.

        • violentbloom says:

          Well hopefully nothing is eating my brain. I had an MRI about a year ago and everything looked fine. Though in a year, things can change.

          And yes hopefully my metabolism is just faster. I've always been skinny, but I didn't eat as a child. I'm also wondering if the tapeworm came and went. In college I had to eat huge amounts of food, ie 2 full plates of food every two hours. And while I was doing weight training, it still seems like an excessive amount of food (about 8,000-12,000 calories a day with 2-6 hours of excercise). Maybe it came and went and I just never noticed it in there. I'm really hoping.

          So foul.

        • pfrank says:

          I used to work for a company that digitized academic journals. The Journal of Parasitology was a parade of horrors.

      • morrisa says:

        Okay, okay, I'm hardly the one to make you feel better about the looming threat of obesity, but I've been working on it. I bet actually getting nutrition from your food will be a REVELATION, unexpectedly satisfying, and that if you make good choices about the food you eat, high protein, high fiber, low fat, low processed sugar, you'll thrive and glow, and be full of energy, with a slim body ready for action, sport, dance! I bet if you just have a quick talk with a nutritionist, you'll find that food without a tapeworm will be as good as having blood without a vampire.

        • violentbloom says:

          I already eat that way. And of course no one in my family did, or does one presumes.

          What with my numerous crazy allergies the food I can eat is fairly limited. Ciao Bella gelato doesn't have eggs, so it's one of the things I occasionally binge on (minus the purging part) mmm fat

      • baconmonkey says:

        Dracunculus aka Guinea Worm, AKA Fire Worms are much, much worse.

  7. mandy_moon says:

    I can't believe how many people would opt to flush the thing. To me, it's as if I can't even imagine not saving it. Adding it to my jar collection, of course.

  8. bifrosty2k says:

    Gentolmange,
    This is another reason not to have buttsex without a condom.
    You will end up with tapeworms in your urethra.

  9. ch says:

    isn't it obvious?

    eBay

  10. mrfantasy says:

    A man was having abdominal pains, he went to his doctor who said he had a tapeworm. The doctor told him he knew what to do. He got a hard-boiled egg and a cookie, and inserted them into the man's butt.

    "Come back every day for the next month," the doctor said.

    So the man came back, every day, and every day the doctor shoved the another egg, and then another cookie, up the man's butt. It was quite uncomfortable, but the doctor assured him that he knew what he was doing.

    After a month, the man came back, and the doctor had an egg, a cookie, and a hammer. The man was obviously upset, but the doctor said, "Don't worry."

    The doctor stuck the egg in the man's butt. The tapeworm then came out looking for the cookie and the doctor killed him with the hammer!

  11. nightrider says:

    Sadly, as far as I can recall from my work at the vet clinic, I don't believe the tapeworm comes out looking very "tapeworm-like" after the medication does it's thing in order to dislodge your friend's little hitchhiker.However, perhaps I could interest you in one of these?

  12. djverablue says:

    i'm sory, but i am going to have to go with option number 2. i have a huge phobia of bugs or any kind being in my body.

  13. merovingian says:

    There comes a point where "ooooo" is overwhelmed by "Gaaah!"

    Next question: would you save a candiru too?

  14. c) Put it in the tequila of someone who I particularly dislike.

    My dad had some sort of bug 'bite' him in Central America. Weeks later, back in the USA, he had an inch-long thing wiggling around under the skin of his chest. It was never successfully identified; it might have been a new species. Sadly, the lab misplaced it. Dad was pissed.

  15. romulusnr says:

    YF "sell it on Ebay".

  16. lifelike001 says:

    read irvine welshs 'filth' and know the worm had only my best interests at heart.

  17. gwferguson says:

    You'd better believe I'd save that fucker; but then, I went to graduate school in Parasitology.

    Side note: we had a professor who maintained one of the rarer tapeworms in his own intestine so that he'd have ready access to specimens when needed.

  18. airstrip_one says:

    Infinitely awesome. It's even better than your electric toothbrush.

  19. violentbloom says:

    thing is it might not be in my colon.