So what is the differential of an 18 year old woman storming into the ER screaming at the top of her lungs? She is holding both ears by the way. Psych? GSW to the head? PID? Most likely something less serious but more distressing to many. The dreaded roach in the ear. If you have ever had a roach in the ear, you know what pain it causes. I never have had that (thank God) but have to say, people with roaches or other insects in the ear are in about as much distress as people with open fractures, in labour, or with their eyeballs hanging out!
Anyway, on this particular evening this woman came in about 3 am shrieking. She only spoke Spanish so it took a few minutes to realise that she had been sleeping peacefully when suddenly she felt like a jackhammer was going off in her ear. Awakening, she realised something was crawling around in there and started screaming – waking up the whole family. The father tried to look in the ear and said he thought he saw some legs moving around! Once we got the woman to sit down, I went about dealing with the arthropod. Generally one has to kill the roach first – then removed it. Once it is dead, it generally does not cause pain anymore. One kills the roach by smother it. There are two usual substances to do it with – first is with Mineral oil – you need oil since insects breath through tubes in the body and water does not occlude them well. Alternatively you can smother it with viscous lidocaine. The viscous nature allows it to work like mineral oil – plus it anaesthetises the ear canal helping with pain. The downside is that if there is a perforation of the tympanic membrane (ear drum) caused by the little critter’s legs, the viscous lidocaine has a deleterious effect on the middle ear and makes the patient vomit. This lady got mineral oil and the roach died a relatively quick death – pain immediately relieved. Unfortunately, it was one of the smaller German Cockroaches and was harder to get out. It came out in pieces – which I think caused the woman even more distress and she then vomited on the nurse that was helping me. Eventually all was well again in Whoville and she was discharged with a prophylactic antibiotic. I guess she and the guy from the rat in the drawer story from a few days ago both need an exterminator!
I’ll make sure I keep all my house spraying appointments with Terminix!
You are killin me with this horrific stuff- But I just keep on readin it!
ugh, I think I might be ill…
and start sleeping with EAR PLUGS, gross!
This is a great blog! I’m a fiction writer and was searching around online doing some research and came across your site. My current book has a medical basis – it’s set in an ED department (I’m Australian) – and I was wondering how you felt about giving me some advice??
Simonne – shoot me an email sometime.
Heh. My dad got a bug in his ear when he was a kid and when he got to the ER, they couldn’t figure out how to get it out. He wound up going to some sort of a specialist. So, rather than being fazed by this story, all I could say was, “Huh. Wow. They got it out.”
Eh, I’d heard my dad’s story a lot. That one was award winning. Seriously. He wrote a humorous speech about it when he was in Toastmasters and it was a hit in competitions.
Anyway, it’s good to know that some ERs are better at dealing with that sort of thing than others.
Having to call a specialist (ENT) to get a bug out of the ear is like the French during WW2, surrender! Now, round smooth things like beads in a kid’s ear is a different story – the kid is sreaming and the bead is too hard to grab with most of the instruments common in an ER. Usually you can’t hold the kid still and run the risk of injuring the tympanic membrane or the canal. Then it is time to punt. The ENT doc takes them to the OR, puts them out and have all sorts of fancy things to help them remove foreign bodies.
I was told by an ENT once that a few drops of sevoflurane into the ear work better than viscous lidocaine. It kills the bug, but unlike with the lido, the bug stays in one piece and usually only needs one pass to get it out.
I remember hearing a story from an ENT years ago, where he looked in a little boy’s ear and saw what he thought was some kind of growth… turned out the kid had been playing with a hole puncher and somehow got one of the little round bits of paper (chad?) in his ear, and it stayed in there long enough to accumulate who-knows-what around it like a pearl in an oyster.
omg. i just had one removed today..
its so loud and its embarrassing.
i had two doc’s look at me and three nurses
in the same room.
and they gave me a shot to came the pain down
but you cant calm pain when theres a bug
in ur ear scratching it..
the nurse cleaned it after it was removed.
when i got home i took a nap,
since i had been awake from four in the morning,
i was tierd.
my ear started bleeding more and it still hurts.
this sucks.
I’ve never heard of that happening…I’m glad that I’ve never seen a roach living in this state!
I’ve seen that on tv, where someone gets a roach in their ear and it has to be killed with lidocaine (they didn’t mention the oil). I’d be afraid to go to sleep again, ever. Fortunately, we don’t seem to have any in our house. I might burn the house down if we did.
I’ve actualy had this happen to me a few months ago! I had the right mind to run into the bathroom and flood my ear with water. Who on earth has mineral oil in the house let alone know where it is at all times? The pain is unbelieveble! Its worst when the little thing keeps going in deeper as roaches can’t go backwards and also when it starts to bite the ear drum!. Needless to say I stayed calm and the thing died after 20secs being flooded with water. Next I just keep poking at it with cotton bud/Q-Tip with the cotton bit taken off. It eventualy came out but runined my nights sleep. I highly recommend EVERYONE sleep with ear buds!
I can relate, lastnite i woke up 2am screaming with a germain cockroach in my ear…. i stormed out the room at the top of my luungs, rushed to the bathroom. luckly my mother was home , she poured peroxide in my ear constantly….. the damn roach was moving around, it felt like it was going deeper.i was crying like a new born.i have no kids , so i really don’t know what pain is really like. after trying that method for 20min she rushed me to the emergncy room…. the DR. seen me right away. he numb my ear twice and used a vacum tube to suck out the lil mud f$%#…. gave me a prescription… and sent me home….. i wounld’t wish that on my enemy.PAIN!!! i have this phobia of anything close to my ear. i might not be able to wear earrings!!!!!
I was awake early one day and opened windows as it was steaming hot in the room when the roach got in to my right ear. It went deeper and I was screaming with pain. It felt like a two sided knife being thrust in to my ear. I was howling with pain while my wife just stood there not knowing what todo. Finally the creature stopped moving and I got to the emergency of the near by hospital. It took two sessions seperated by 14 days to took all parts of the creature of my ear but not before it had succeeded in rupturing my eardrum. In process of extraction my inner ear was wounded and after more than one month my ear is still infected and sometimes inner ear aches very badly . Doc says I may need surgery if the eardrum doesnot heal buy itself.
ok when i was 10 years old i had a roach crawl into my ear. it was so loud and it hurt so bad. it kept crawling deeper and deeper in to my ear, it was a little german cockroach and my father fried it with rubbing alchol and peroxide then mineral oil. he didn’t know what it was at the time, i was taken to the er where the doctor told me i had a roach in my ear my father was in shock and i was screaming. they got it out piece by piece the roach was so deep in my ear it had its legs behind my eardrum. but i thought it was over i had a phobia for a while sleeping with cotton balls in my ear for almost 2 years . i then got over it and stopped sleeping with them in my ears. i am now 21 and this morning i felt something crawl in my ear i quickly woke up and told my wife something is in my ear she didn’t believe me so time went by about a hour later i started to get this pain a horrible pain like something is scratching at my ear drum i knew what it was and immedietly freaked the f*ck out i got dressed got in my truck was driving down the road, and i could still feel it moving (if i would’ve had mineral oil i would’ve killed it)but as i was going down the road i felt it moving making a bunch of noise i knew it was coming out i tilted my head and there it came out a baby palmetto bug i swerved and got pulled over by the cops and when i told him my story he could’nt believe it until i showed him the squished bug mind u that still had ear wax on it. so i got away with a warning and a grossed out cop what a life i’ve had but from now on i will sleep with cotton balls or earplugs in ……and we do not have a roach problem our house is very clean….peolple will win the lottery but im the guy that gets 2 roaches in his ear in one lifetime we should call this comment 2 roaches one ear (2 girls one cup)……
THis is a thing that I wouldnt bare on anybody. the best advice i can give is get some twizzer and when it trys to pull out have someone remove it because the pain is just unbearable. or kill it with oil. but i suggest taking it out with twizzer.