When it comes to feeling unwell, there are two types of people in this world; there's the type who battle on and wait for it to run its course, and there's the overreacting sort who somehow manage to conflate their pretty innocuous symptoms with those of a serious and potentially deadly illness.
Now, usually, I pride myself in being a member of the former category. However, when I heard about one hugely unsettling medical emergency which escalated from a mere migraine to having a huge leech pulled out of the patient's throat, well, suddenly being a hypochondriac didn't seem so unreasonable after all.
This is the alarming moment doctors removed a large leech living inside a woman's throat:The patient in question was a 63-year-old woman from Ha Giang Province in Vietnam. She arrived at the hospital having suffered from relentless migraines for three months, the Daily Mail reports.
It was then that the patient was diagnosed with a throat tumour which would have to be removed via a surgical procedure.
So imagine the doctors' immense shock when, during the surgery, they found a two-inch leech living in the patient’s sinuses!
The unnerving footage was captured in January of this year and shows the exact moment a doctor pulls a live leech out of the 63-year-old's throat.
Following its removal, the leech writhes around as it is placed on a tray, splattered in drops of the woman's blood.
The doctors later explained that if the creature had not been detected in time, it would have attacked the patient's sinuses, in turn making it near-impossible for her to breathe.
But how exactly did a leech manage to find its way inside a person's throat, you ask?
Well, the unnamed woman lives in the mountains and often bathes in nearby springs, which is how doctors believe she would have come into contact with the leech.
If you think that's bizarre, check out this woman who discovered her headaches were being caused by a rather cute spider living in her ear:
