To be a fly on the wall during this medical mishap? Priceless.
This month, doctors were shocked to find an actual fly inside a man's intestines during a routine colon screening. According to The Independent, the fly was found intact inside a 63-year-old man, who told doctors he'd consumed nothing but clear liquids one day before the exam. He'd also eaten pizza and lettuce two days before the colonoscopy. The man didn't recall an insect being inside either dish and claimed that there weren't any symptoms to suggest otherwise.
Matthew Bechtold, the chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Missouri, told The Independent that upon seeing that the fly was "not moving on its own or with manipulation with the scope," it was removed from the man during the exam and confirmed to be dead. Although Bechtold was unsure of how the insect entered the patient, he suggested that the fly was either consumed or went in through the man's rectum.
If entering through consumption, "you would think that upper digestive enzymes and stomach acid would have degraded the fly. However, the fly was intact, making this hypothesis less likely," Bechtold said.
“If from the bottom, an opening must have been created long enough for the fly to fly undetected into the colon and somehow make its way to the middle part of the colon with no light in a very curvy, large intestine," he added.
In rare cases, insects can enter the digestive tract if a person consumes food with larvae or insect eggs, although generally, neither can survive stomach acids to hatch and grow within a person's body.
