What This Man Found When He Thought He Was Just Coughing up a 'Large Phlegm Ball' Is Disgusting

A British man woke up feeling like he had to cough up a "large phlegm ball" — only it wasn't mucus he eventually hacked up.

Speaking with GetWestLondon about the cringe-worthy incident, 52-year-old Phil Lyndon said upon closer examination, he saw what he coughed up was a 5-mm-long bug.

"I’ve had a bad cough for a little while and went to the doctors last Thursday. He gave me antibiotics and on Friday morning I coughed up what I thought was a big lump of phlegm into the toilet," Lyndon told the news website. "I then looked a little closer as I could see something brown in it and it was wriggling."

Man with bad cough spewed out this 'WRIGGLING CRITTER' https://t.co/Nv2yJ6JFGX pic.twitter.com/2ntTP1SGhH

— GetWestLondon (@GetWestLondon) May 11, 2015

Feel free to release a collective "eww" at this point.

"I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and fished it out," he continued to GetWestLondon. "It had stopped moving by this point and I took a picture of it on my iPad. When I zoomed into the image I could clearly see that it was a bug."

Lyndon said he went back to the doctor to explain the situation and was referred to University College London's Hospital for Tropical Diseases where he had an X-ray. Fortunately, there no other bugs or issues.

As for the specimen, it was taken for identification by an entomologist. Lyndon told GetWestLondon he sent a picture of the animal to British Bugs, whose experts said it could be a mayfly nymph.

(H/T: Daily Record)

—

Front page image via Shutterstock.