Finally Removed After Three Doctor Visits

Most bugs are disgusting but I think cockroaches are the worst. And I will apologize in advance if this story ends up haunting you. I used it as a Strange But True story on the air Monday morning. I found the story in Self magazine. It's a story about a woman named Katie Holley. Katie had a cockroach crawl into her ear in the middle of the night. She tried to get it out with a Q-tip and that ended up only removing two legs. According to the article, she asked her husband to pull it out with tweezers. That again only yielded two more legs from the bug. They decided to go to the emergency room. Katie told Self magazine that she could feel the roach scratching and moving around in her ear canal. The emergency room doctors used lidocaine to numb Katie's ear and kill the bug. After the numbness wore off, her ear still didn't feel right so she went to see her doctor who flushed her ear and pulled out more pieces of the roach, then he made an appointment with an ear-nose-and-throat specialist later in the day. That doctor pulled out the upper torso, the head, and even more legs according to Self.

This story wigs me out. I know they have had a few cockroaches here at the station in the past. They have an exterminator spray on a regular basis and I have only seen one in the past 14 months. After reading this story, I have to remember to look inside my headphones before I put them on, just in case. I also have a pullover fleece that I leave in my office because it's always cold in the studio and even colder in my office. I found myself shaking the fleece before I slipped it over my head this morning just to make sure nothing was hiding inside. Worse yet, I sleep with my mouth open at night. I wonder if I've ever swallowed a bug while I was sleeping? I think this story will be keeping me up at night.

[via Self]