Lv told doctors he would leave food by his bed at night. Speaking to local media, Dr. Jiang Tengxiang, deputy head of ENT at the hospital explained this likely attracted the bugs. The adult cockroach might have viewed the man’s ear as an incubation chamber, and crawled inside, said Tengxiang.
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man in China suffering from an earache discovered his ear was filled with almost a dozen cockroaches.
The 24-year-old man identified only as Mr. Lv visited a hospital in Guangdong Province, southeast China, in October, the New York Post reported citing the AsiaWire news agency. Lv told doctors he had been experiencing a “sharp pain” in his right ear.
Dr. Zhong Yijin, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist at Sanhe Hospital who treated the man, told AsiaWire: “He said his ear hurt a lot, like something was scratching or crawling inside.
“It caused a lot of discomfort,” the doctor said.
The patient said a member of his family had previously shone a light inside his ear and found a huge bug inside. Dr. Yijin examined the man’s ear canal. Inside, he found an adult cockroach surrounded by her newly born insect offspring.
The insects were German cockroaches. Dr. Yijiin said he found over 10 baby cockroaches inside the man’s ear canal.
Lv told doctors he would leave food by his bed at night. Speaking to local media, Dr. Jiang Tengxiang, deputy head of ENT at the hospital explained this likely attracted the bugs. The adult cockroach might have viewed the man’s ear as an incubation chamber, and crawled inside, said Tengxiang.
Hospital staff used tweezers to remove the adult cockroach and her babies from the man’s ear.
Sanhe Hospital said in a statement seen by AsiaWire that despite his ordeal, Lv was left with minor injuries to his ear. Doctors sent him home with a course of antibiotics.
To those worried about suffering a similar fate, Tengxiang advised practising good hygiene, as well as disinfecting drains and sewers and fitting mosquito nets over windows to prevent cockroaches from entering the home. “That’ll stop insects from flying or crawling into your noses and ears.” said Tengxiang.
Last year, a woman from Florida detailed a similar experience for Self.com.
Katie Holley said she and her husband bought a new home in the state. Due to the humid Florida climate, they weren’t surprised when they found cockroaches at the property. Holley paid for an exterminator to rid their home of the bugs.One night she “shot up out of bed, disoriented.”
“I could feel that my ear was not right. I grabbed a cotton swab and gently inserted it into my ear to see what was up and I felt something move,” she said.
She pulled out the cotton swab, and saw two legs stuck to it.Legs that could only belong to an adventurous palmetto bug exploring my ear canal,” said Holley.
Her husband looked inside her ear and confirmed there was a cockroach inside. He tried to pull the roach out with the tweezers from the thickest part of its body, but only managed to grab hold of two legs.
“It was an awful feeling, one that was not necessarily painful, but psychologically torturous,” she recalled.
A doctor at A&E was able to remove the roach from her ear.
“Now I am roach-free and feeling better. I do think that my ear will heal faster than my psyche,” she said.
Culled from newsweek.com
