A mother fed her daughter tapeworms to make her lose weight for a beauty competition in Florida and the whole incident was revealed after the girl got admitted in a hospital due to severe abdominal pain.
The teenage girl, who was undergoing severe stomach pain, was taken to the hospital by her mother. Initially, the nurses thought she is pregnant as her belly was swollen. But after an ultrasound their assumptions went wrong as the results showed that she was not having a baby, according to the Independent.
The girl was then given a medicine, which made her take a trip to the toilet. The cause of the pain got revealed when the patient screamed from the washroom. The nurses along with her mother saw a disgusting sight; the toilet bowl was full of tapeworms.
According to the nurse, the tapeworms were long and wiggling around trying to get out of the toilet bowl, reports The Huffington Post.
"We were wondering how did she get those tapeworms, and then you saw the mom turn white", Maricar Cabral Osorio, a nurse explained the whole scenario on an episode of "Untold Stories of the E.R".
"The mom was apologizing to the girl. It's like 'I'm so sorry. You know, I did it just to make you a little skinnier. You needed some help before we went on to the pageant," she added.
The mother of the teenager accepted that she fed her daughter pills with tapeworm eggs in it, which hatched after going inside the stomach.
It is still unknown whether the mother faced any criminal charges because of such action or not.
This kind of weight loss remedies are in process since long time. Tapeworms are marketed for nearly 100 years to lose weight but doctors warn that ingesting them is extremely dangerous.
