Man with 'explosive diarrhoea' parasite from eating Taco Bell thought he had Crohn's disease during 17 day ordeal

A man who says he spent days suffering from 'explosive diarrhoea' after eating Taco Bell got so bad he thought he had Crohn's disease.

Matthew Anderson endured a 'rough 17 days' when he started exploding from his rear end so badly he thought he'd come down with a lifelong condition that never fully goes away.

Matthew told LADbible he can 'remember vividly on a Sunday night getting Taco Bell', and he ordered something with lettuce on it in his desire for a 'late night snack'.

"I ate the Taco Bell and then I had Chipotle three times in the same week. I was kind of greedy with my Mexican food.

"Fast forward a week. It was a Monday night, and I was just sitting down on the couch, like ‘oh my god’. Like my stomach is... I feel like I'm gonna throw up."

That night his 'farts were so bad' that his dog was scrunching up its nose and turning away because the gaseous expulsion from between his cheeks was 'just like straight rotten eggs'.

The next day he was late to work because he was 'just s**tting straight', saying he thought ‘oh my god I can't hold this in’ as he was constantly running to the toilet to deal with the explosive situation.

His buttock-problems subsided for a couple of days, but then at the weekend it 'came back just straight runny'.

I think by now you get the picture of what poor Matthew was going through, so we'll move on from the play-by-play of his toilet trips.

The poor chap feared he either had Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome, but he'd also heard of a parasite going around and wondered if it might be that, though a doctor told him to 'try Immodium' which turned out to be the wrong option since he had the parasite.

Eventually he got really bad muscle spasms and had a stool sample taken which told him he had a cyclosporiasis infection, an illness in the intestines caused by a parasite.

While he reckons he normally has a 'stomach of steel' it really threw him for a loop when he felt 'intense nausea' and started throwing up and having bad stomach cramps.

It got to the point where he was 'scared to fart' and two pairs of trousers were tragic casualties of his symptoms, with it being days before he went to see a doctor as he was so dehydrated that he was 'ready to pass out'.

"I was just really out of it," Matthew told LADbible.

"I felt so fatigued because of how much I was losing fluids and electrolytes from literally the parasite. I mean, it eats away at your gut lining and steals electrolytes from you."

He'd heard of the infection in lettuce that affected Taco Bell's suppliers, but he didn't think it included him because there were so few cases in his area.

He said: "I started seeing Taco Bell and the lettuce and stuff like that.

"I didn't think I had it because there was only, I think at the time, 42 known cases in my state. I'm in West Virginia, so I was actually the 48th case.

"I was like, ‘There's no way I have this, right?’ I mean, it's so few and far between, but I mean, I did. So I was like the 1,800th case in the United States for it. Lucky me."

The place he went stopped serving lettuce a few days after he ate it and he thought 'this is probably it'.

Given his worries that it might be something more serious he'd be dealing with for the rest of his life he was 'actually crossing his fingers for a parasite'.

"It really does suck. Just like the fluid loss, even for a young healthy person is hard," Matthew said of his ordeals.

"But for younger infants and the elderly, it can really take an extreme toll on your body and hospitalise you.

"It can definitely wipe out, you know, a lot of your energy. Just be careful and just be extremely hydrated if you suspect you have it."

LADbible Group have contacted Taco Bell for comment.