The patient: A 55-year-old man in Bangladesh
The symptoms: The man went to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain that he said began five hours prior to his visit.
What happened next: During a physical examination, doctors noted that the patient's temperature and blood pressure were normal. His heartbeat was slightly elevated, at 110 beats per minute (bpm). (A typical resting heart rate for adults is 60 to 100 bpm.)
The man explained that one day earlier, an eel had "entered through his rectum accidentally," his doctors wrote in a report of the case. At the time of the encounter, the man was wearing a lungi — a type of long skirt often worn by Bangladeshi men — and he explained that the eel entered his lungi through the opening at the bottom and then wriggled into his anal canal.
He did not seek medical attention immediately after this happened, as he had hoped the fish would exit on its ...
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