Doctors take 9 days to remove cockroach which has crawled inside woman's ear

Feeling irritation in the ear may mean a lot of things but sometimes it can turn out to be something alarming. While tiny objects that end up in the ear can often be removed, at times the situation can be tricky.

Katie Holly from Florida felt something cold in her ear and decided to stick a cotton swab inside after assuming it was a piece of ice that slid inside. But then she felt something move and burrow its way deep in her ear.

When she pulled the swab out, she noticed brown bits that looked like eggs. The woman wrote that cockroaches had been a problem in her house and pest control measures had given temporary relief.

While Holly pulled out a couple of legs using tweezers, the insect had gone too deep in her ear canal. She was rushed to the hospital where a nurse injected the roach with anaesthetic to kill it as Holly noticed it was wriggling to avoid death.

It stopped moving after two minutes and the doctor pulled out chunks of the bug in 20 seconds as Holly went home with ear drops and antibiotics. But nine days later she still felt that her ear was numb and on flushing her ear four times, Holly’s doctor saw another leg.

More bits were pulled out after which a specialist placed a microscope next to her face. This time the head, torso, limbs and antennae of a fully grown cockroach were pulled out of Holly’s ear.

While it was shocking that much of the insect was inside for nine days, she didn’t suffer any major damage or infection.