Hi. I have for a few months had some vague symptoms that I never put much thought into. A few times of nausea that went away after a few hours, some stomach aches that didn t last for long, and problems losing weight plus a bloated belly. I put the issues aside thinking they could be stress, the bloated belly could be my weight gain. For the last few months I ve been gaining weight instead of losing, despite being careful with what I eat and doing more exercise. I ve never had problems with losing weight before. Over these months I ve also had different stools, from diarrhea to normal. For about a week I had some stomach pain, like a vague stinging pain on the left side by the navel. I also had a lot of gas, so I thought it was because of this. A few days ago I found something in my stools, that looked like a large pumpkin seed covered in what looked like slime (I thought it almost looked like a small floating tea-bag in the toilet when I first saw it). I took it up, and it had what looked like a sack on one side, with water inside. This popped when I touched it. Afterwards it tried up, and it now looks like a large flat pumpkin seed, light brown in color. I haven t been eating seeds, so this made me a bit troubled. I tried to look online what this could be, the closest thing I could find a description of was dog tapeworm. I have no idea how I could have gotten that. I was bitten by a flea a few months ago, and got pretty ill afterwards with a swollen leg, nausea and sweating. But I ve read you can t get tapeworm just by a flea-bite (even though the symptoms with my stomach started a while after the bite). Any idea if this could indeed be tapeworm, or something else?
posted on
Thu, 25 Sep 2014

Thu, 29 Jan 2015
Answered on

Thu, 29 Jan 2015
Last reviewed on