Cockroach in ear

JamesW

Last night I stayed up past midnight watching England give India a good hammering in the cricket . All of a sudden my wife came out of the bedroom, bent over double, screaming, and generally freaking out. Turns out a cockroach has crawled into her ear . Not unreasonably she asks me to extract it. Cue a search for some tweezers. They are eventually found, but it is no use. The beastie has obviously crawled deep into her ear as it is not to be found. More freaking out suggests that it is still alive and scuttling though. A few more probes with the tweezers only succeed in retrieving a tiny bit of shell.

After giving up on the tweezers I fallback to the trusty internet. Googling for 'insect ear' brings up some useful links. They suggest not poking things in the ear . They do suggest turning the affected ear upwards. San is reluctant to do this, and it seems to lead to an increase in insect activity . Next suggestion is to pour oil in the ear. Two search results suggest the same thing - that's as good as medical fact in my book . The first oil I find in the kitchen is mustard oil - probably bad. More searching reveals some corn oil. I tip some in. The cockroach doesn't bob to the top, but on the plus side it appears to have drowned. No scuttling means no more freaking out.

It's half past midnight by now and we need to find a professional to remove the carcass.Our baby is asleep so we don't want to wake her. Fortunately we live in an apartment block with 24 hour watchmen, and one of them agrees to babysit whilst we head for the hospital. A medical drama is the perfect excuse for driving as recklessly as my 800cc car allows. The roads are empty, apart from the sleeping dogs, and the car is slow so it is safe enough. We park outside the gates and walk in to reception. They're all watching the cricket too, although with India 40/4 I suspect they're not too happy with the way things are going. A doctor is more than happy to leave the game and take a look in San's ear. He manages to extract some small pieces of insect, but is unable to retrieve the main body. This makes me feel better about my failed attempts. The ENT specialist is called from his home, and says he will be round in 15 minutes. Meanwhile a crowd of doctors, asssistants and nusrses has formed - they're loving it. True to his word the ENT guy arrives at the promised time and invites us into his surgery. There's obviously a knack to extracting things from ears, as he pulls out the obstruction with one attempt. The doctors crowd round to take a look at the expired culprit. For some reason San doesn't want to join them.

A few swabs of iodine later we return to reception and settle up the bill. 400 Rupees. The staff thank us for livening up their night, and we return home some time after 1am. San stuffed her ears with cotton wool before going back to sleep .

dzibead

What a saga!

Bhaswaran

Great story.......interesting.. I have never heard of something like this before...although my house has many cockroaches......my wife is scared of the cockroaches but the cockroaches are scared of me and my 4-year-old son. Both of us kill them with our sandals at their first sight. My son likes chasing those creepy creatures and really enjoys the household jungle safari.

Now I am thinking about a photo-documentation on them. ha ha

karuna

Have you ever laughed in horror? That is what I am doing right now.

With a title like that I really knew I shouldn't have read it.


Well, I hope everything's OK now.


Oh god I don't think I'll ever be able to sleep again....

Nick-H

I feel sorry for the cockroach...

But seriously, although I have no objection to them as individuals, I know that just a few leads to an infestation, so I kill them too.

I don't like the idea of anything taking a walk inside my ear!

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icetea

OMG, horror story...

Have seen something like this on TV...bug in the ear (but this time the patient was screaming her brains out and the doctor couldn't take it out because the patient was very restless...so they too poured some stuff over to kill it, can't remember what).

shashank.aggarwal

I am feeling creepy...

Don't know what to say...if it was me I might have simply freaked out !!

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amarshah

I am sure if my wife had to go through it she would have either fainted or had a heart attack. infact last Sunday i spent 60min trying to remove a lizard from my Kitchen (small baby one) other wise my wife was planning to spend the night else where... she freaks seeing or thinking about lizards n other bugs...

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Nick-H

Guys; Girls!

It's only a beetle we're talking about here!

Sure, not very welcome, but I'd rather have a cockroach in my ear than some street guy sticking a tool in claiming to be cleaning the wax out.

But then...

I guess I never heard the story about how they can't back up, so their only alternative is to tunnel through the ear and brain, coming out the other side...

brownboy66

oh that's cruel I can already hear the screams from various IMers in response to that one....

don't have any experience with bugs in ears, but have had to deal with peas and carrots shoved up a nose (children will experiment)...

gautam

Well, in my case, it was a mosquito .
Hot summer nights made me sleep in front of the desert cooler which was placed outside the window.
I was in my dreams when i heard a humming noise which was coming from very far away. I thought its something to do with my dream. That humming noise grew stronger & made me wake up & sit upright. The noise stopped. A sigh of relief.
The nose came again & i thought it was a mosquito near my ear so i made an attempt to shoo it away.
The noise stopped again. A sigh of relief.
It came again I dashed to the kitchen only to find heaps of cockroaches playing cricket everywhere.
The light & my sound made them hide. I grabbed some matchsticks & started playing poker .
I was lucky the carcass came all out in few minutes. Phew a permanent sigh of relief

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Nick-H

My worst was a small beetle that flew into my eye.

It was walking around and heading up behind the eye-lid. I managed to get it out (alive too, I'm glad to say) before it disappeared behind the eyeball.

Good thing too, else there would have been years of "...that time we had to bundle you off to hospital miles away, because you had a beetle in your eye." from my parents. Parents are like that

happysnapper999

I had ear trouble for several days after five weeks in Goa swimming in the sea everyday. I tried everything to unblock it but to no avail. By the time I got to Bangalore I was almost insane with the pain and so while walking to the station to get train tickets, one of the ear wallahs stopped me and asked if i wanted my ears cleaned. I readily accepted his offer thinking he must know what he's doing.

He proceeded to pour olive oil? into my ear, before fitting a piece of cotton wool to a long piece of wire, which he then inserted in my ear and wriggled it about. As he was doing this, a crowd formed and a number of Indians started shaking their heads and talking amongst themselves.

He removed the first piece of cotton wool and dropped it on the floor, before attaching a second, wrigging it about, removing it, dropping it on the floor... a third... fourth etc

In the end I had to tell him to stop, as it was having absolutely no effect and if anything, was only making things worse. He then demanded a ludicrous sum. I decided 10 rupees just out of politeness. He was most unimpressed and left, at which point the crowd approached and told me I shouldn't have let him anywhere near my ears as it is not unknown for eardrums to be ruptured by such a technique.

A couple of days later in Mysore I was at the end of my tether with it, so I asked the guesthouse where I might find a doctor. They gave me an address and off i went trying to find my way there using the Lonely Planet map which in my experience are as useful as a chocolate teapot. The map made no sense what-so-ever until suddenly I saw a doctor's sign and thought, "this will do."

I went in and a very rude receptionist (the same the world over!) told me to sit down and wait. Finally I went into his room, which was the size of a cupboard, and saw pictures of medical things on the walls and so thought everything was at last going to be alright. He asked me what the trouble was and upon telling him he told me to lay down on the examination table.

He then proceeded to open various cupboards, shut them again, open them again, shut them again as if he were as new to the room as I was. Finally he produced a kidney bowl, which he put down by my head, before starting with the cupboards again, this time producing a huge syringe like for icing a cake. Some more rummaging ensued and a length of rubber tube appeared which he attached to the syringe.

I am not a doctor, but I've had my ears syringed a few times, so I was beginning to wonder quite how he was going to tackle the whole problem. By now i had been in the room for ten minutes and was still no closer to being cured, but after two weeks of constant pain, I was happy to wait a bit longer if it was finally going to be sorted.

At last he was ready, and opening another cupboard to reveal a sink, he proceeded to fill the syringe with cold water from the tap. Once done, he inserted the rubber tube in my ear and having adjusted the kidney bowl to his satisfaction emptied the syringe into my ear, down my neck, on my hair, over the examination table and probably all over himself.

He then picked up my head and tilted it over the bowl to allow the water to run out of my ear, before asking me if it felt any better. No I said, so he returned to fill the syringe again and repeat the procedure. By now I knew it was useless and just to emphasise this he tilted my head over the bowl again, and shook my head like he was emptying a bottle to get the last few drops out of it. At this point I called a halt to the proceedings, paid him 70 rupees and left.

Finally, after several trials and tribulations including pouring the pudding onto the main course in a south Indian thali restaurant... I found the ENT doctor. It was just before the England cricket team's disasterous tour of India and he was most interested to hear my thoughts on their chances (I didn't have any) He took five minutes to sort me out and (touch wood) I have had absolutely no trouble with my ear since. He charged me 100 rupees and he was fantastic! The nicest doctor I have ever met.

Familyonthemove

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Nick-H

...

I want to knw what Happysnapper's ENT man did! After all that suspense!