“I looked like J-Lo.”

A Florida resident says a “massive, flesh-eating bacteria” that he contracted while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico did quite a number on his backside — and he was almost too embarrassed to tell anybody about it.

“Being a man, I decided it’s going to be OK,” said Mike O’Grady, of Citrus County, in an interview with WFLA.

“I don’t want anyone to go looking. I’ll be fine,” he recalled telling himself.

Three weeks later, O’Grady was singing a much different tune.

“It got worse as every day went by,” he said. “It was very, very intense. I mean my buttocks were swollen up. I looked like J-Lo when I went to the hospital.”

The 68-year-old had contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially deadly infection that has been running rampant in the US in recent weeks.

The illness can be caused by several different types of bacteria, although “group A Streptococcus (group A strep)” are considered by the CDC to be the most common cause.

“They tell me I had a massive, flesh-eating bacteria working down there on my backside,” O’Grady said, though it’s unclear which one.

It took six surgeries — over the course of six days — for doctors to remove the bacteria from his body.

“I was in bad shape,” he told WFLA. “Had I waited another 8 hours to stay until the morning to see how it feels I may not have made it. That’s how bad this bacteria was.”

He pointed out how many people have fallen fatally ill after contracting the necrotizing fasciitis infection.

“I could have died from this, yes. That’s what they said,” O’Grady acknowledged. “I could have died from this.”