Surgeons cut pounds of petroleum jelly out of ‘Popeye’ bodybuilder’s biceps
He is who he is — until he isn’t.
A Russian bodybuilder dubbed “Popeye” for his disproportionately large biceps nearly died as a result of the poisonous petroleum jelly injections in his arms.
Kirill Tereshin, 23, is recovering from surgery to remove synthol oil and “dead” muscle tissue from his arms. The substance in the bodybuilder’s enormous, 24-inch guns caused pain, fever and illness.
The social media personality with 442,000 followers on Instagram had a total of about three pounds removed at the behest of his doctors, who said his gargantuan limbs may eventually cause death or require amputation.
A Russian plastic surgery activist, 32-year-old Alana Mamaeva, helped raise the money for Tereshin’s surgery, according to East2West news.
Surgeon Dmitry Melnikov of Sechenov Moscow State Medical University, who performed Tereshin’s first operation, said he still had about 75 percent more of the Vaseline-like implant to extract, which should take at least three more surgeries.
Petroleum jelly “saturates the muscles,” said the surgeon, so the lump taken from Tereshin’s arm was actually a mass of “scar tissue with fragments of muscles.” Melnikov estimated that Tereshin had injected over 100 ounces (about three liters) into each arm.
“It saturated the muscle tissues, blocked blood flow,” said Melnikov. “As a result, the tissue dies and gets replaced with a scar which is as tough as a tree.” The doctor added that synthol oil could have wreaked havoc all over, his “kidneys in particular,” but that the patient was “lucky” to have spared the rest of his body.
Melnikov said that body modifications such as Tereshin’s are not uncommon. “We have seen petroleum jelly injected into breasts, buttocks and other parts of the female body,” he said. “We are warning that it is extremely dangerous.”
Last month, the wannabe Sailor Man fought and lost spectacularly in an MMA-style match with Russian blogger Oleg Mongol, who is two decades Tereshin’s senior, despite having trained with 18-year-old Tamaev Asxab, the so-called “Russian Hulk”.
This summer, the former Russian soldier revealed that he’d originally intended to use the risky substance on more than just his arms.
“In the beginning, I wanted to inject synthol oil into other parts of my body, but then the problems started and I stopped using it,” said Tereshin.
Photo Credit: Alana Mamaeva