Earlier this month, doctors reportedly performed life-saving surgery to remove a nine-pound hairball from an 18-year-old girl's stomach. The huge hairball was apparently the result of the teen compulsively eating bits of her own hair and wool chunks from a carpet. Fair warning: Pictures of the bloody hunk of hair and wool, embedded below, are exactly as disgusting as you'd expect.

Ayperi Alekseeva, from the Batken Province in Kyrgyzstan, reportedly couldn't eat food or drink any liquids without becoming ill. Eventually, doctors in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, discovered the gargantuan hairball blocking Alekseeva's digestive system and performed emergency surgery.

"The parents brought her in after she started losing weight, and she couldn't eat anything," Professor Bahadir Bebezov, who performed the surgery, told Metro UK. "By the time we got her, should could not even drink water. We realized we needed to operate immediately."

'"It was actually the only alternative, nothing else would solve the problem," Bebezov added. "In fact, her stomach was so badly swollen from hair and bits of wool from the carpet that it literally just oozed out soon as the wall of the stomach was cut."

According to Bebezov, Alekseeva is recovering nicely and has promised to stop eating her own hair.

[Image via Shutterstock]