Page 7 - IAV Digital Magazine #486

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Man Goes To Hospital With Earache, Doctors Discover Family of Cockroaches Living Inside His Ear
By Kashmira Gander
A man in China suffering from an earache discov- ered his ear was filled with almost a dozen cock- roaches.
The 24-year-old man identified only as Mr. Lv visited a hospital in Guangdong Pr ovince, southeast China, in October, the New York Port reported cit- ing the AsiaWire news agency.
Lv told doctors he had been experi- encing a "sharp pain" in his right ear.
Dr. Zhong Yijin, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) spe- cialist 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 previ- ously shone a light inside his
ear and found a huge bug inside.
Dr. Yijin exam- ined the man's ear canal. Inside, he found an adult cockroach sur- rounded by her newly born insect offspring. The insects were German cock- roaches.
Dr. Yijiin said he found over 10 baby cockroach- es inside the man's ear canal.
"They were already running around," he said.
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 hospi- tal explained this likely attracted the bugs. The adult cockroach might have viewed the man's ear as an incuba- tion 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 state- ment seen
by AsiaWire that despite his ordeal, Lv was left with minor injuries to his ear. Doctors sent him home with a course of antibi- otics.
To those worried about suffering a similar fate, Tengxiang advise d practising good hygiene, as well as disinfecting drains and sew-
ers and fitting mosquito nets over windows to prevent cock- roaches 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 experi- ence for Self.com.
Katie Holley said she and her hus- band bought a new home in the state. Due to the humid Florida cli- mate, 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 insert- ed 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. Legs that could only belong to an adventurous palmetto bug exploring my ear canal," said Holley.
Her husband looked inside her ear and con- firmed 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 neces- sarily 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.
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