Cockroach Found Its Home In A Woman's Ear And Stayed There For More Than A Week
Ew.
By Tamara Jayne — 07 May 2018, 01:46 PM
On 14 April, American woman Katie Holley was rudely awakened at 1:14am by something crawling in her left ear
Feeling something cold sliding inside her ear, Holley initially thought it was just a small piece of ice. She rushed to the bathroom, grabbed a cotton bud, and slowly stuck it into her ear. However, she felt it move and burrow deeper into her ear canal.
When she pulled the cotton bud out, she noticed two dark brown pieces that looked like legs
Panicking, she called her husband, Jordan Holley who rushed into the bathroom to help his wife. Using a pair of tweezers, he managed to pull out a few more legs of what belonged to a palmetto bug also known as a Florida wood cockroach.
Anyone who lives in a hot and humid area will know that cockroaches thrive in dark and damp places. A few weeks before the incident, Katie had called local exterminators to spray every room in their home in Melbourne, Florida.
She felt a sense of relief thinking that the pests were completely removed from their house.
However, much to her shock, one little guy was left behind and decided to set up his home in the coziest of spaces... her ear.
As she and her husband rushed to the emergency room, Katie could feel the little creature wriggling around inside her ear
The doctor placed a numbing liquid into her ear that killed the cockroach. He then managed to pull out a few more pieces of its body.
"Once three pieces of roach were removed, the doctor showed them to us on a little napkin. They were small. When intact and in all of its roach glory, I would guess that it was about the size of my pinky nail down to my first knuckle. So it wasn't super huge—but it was still a roach. In my ear," she wrote in a SELF column.
Katie and her husband eventually left the hospital at 3:45am with antibiotics and ear drops thinking that the worst part of it was over
They even bought ear plugs to prevent the traumatic ordeal from happening again.
"My ear remained numb for 24 hours, but I still noticed some residual pain and crackling when I yawned after I regained feeling. No, the nightmare wasn't over," she said.
Thinking that it was just due to all the prodding and poking the doctor did to get the bug out, Katie assumed that the pain would eventually subside. But as the week went by, she did not notice any improvement.
Nine days later, Katie went back to her local clinic and mentioned it to her doctor who checked her ear again. After flushing it out, they discovered yet another spiky leg.
She flushed it again and pulled out six more pieces of the roach's carcass - more than one week after the ordeal!
The doctor told her that she would need to see an ENT specialist immediately as she felt that there was still more left inside her ear.
"I kept thinking about the pieces that were extracted at the ER. Did they find the head? Antennae? I couldn't recall. But I could only hope that the ENT would only need to remove another teensy leg or two," she wrote.
The ENT specialist placed a microscope in her ear and confirmed that there was indeed "something in there." He then used a scissors-like tool and extracted what looked like a head, torso, antennae, and more limbs!
He assured Katie that he had extracted all of the remains of the roach and even mentioned that he removes insects from patient's ears at least once every month. He added that she was the second person that day who needed it.
Feeling squirmish? Perhaps it's time to start wearing headphones or ear plugs to sleep tonight. :/
