Doctors in southern China had to remove two 10cm-long living worms from the arm of an anguished woman after she reported a big lump.

The woman, surnamed Wang, said the lump, which first appeared on her arm a year ago, got bigger and bigger. Eventually, it ballooned to the size of a quail egg.

Wang said the sharp pain from the swollen mass prompted her to seek medical treatment at Shenzhen People’s Hospital, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, reported Shenzhen TV.

Doctors said the two worms taken out of Wang’s arm were sparganum, a type of parasite commonly found in the bodies of people with an unhealthy lifestyle.

Wang recalled that she often cooked frogs at home, killing them on the same chopping board that she used to prepare cold dishes.

According to the doctors at the hospital, Wang’s kitchen knife and chopping board might have been polluted by sparganum cysts.

As she prepared the cold dishes on the board, the cysts were probably attached to the chopped food and as a result had entered people’s bodies.

“Unlike other parasites, sparganums would not mature into adults while in the human body; instead, they just move around among various tissues,” said an unidentified doctor from the Shenzhen hospital’s dermatological department.