cockroach
Picture for representationCreative commons

Florida resident Katie Holley shared how she managed to live 9 days being fully aware that there is a cockroach in her ear.

Last year, Katie shifted to a new apartment with her husband and everything was fine except for the fact that there were cockroaches in the house. They, like another people would do, decided to call a local exterminator and got the house sprayed.

After this Katie thought that the bugs were gone for good, but little did she knew that she will have a really close encounter with one of these roaches.

Last month, Katie woke up feeling something was not right with her left ear. "I shot up out of bed, disoriented, and stumbled to the bathroom. 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. When I pulled the cotton swab out, there were two dark brown, skinny pieces stuck to the tip. Moments later, I came to the realization that they were legs. LEGS. Legs that could only belong to an adventurous palmetto bug exploring my ear canal," wrote Katie in a post for self.com.

After this realization, the couple rushed to the doctor, who decided to give Katie some Lidocaine to numb the area and kill the insect. But, unfortunately, when the doctor administered the drug, the roach began to react.

"Feeling a roach in the throes of death, lodged in a very sensitive part of your body, is unlike anything I can adequately explain," she added.

To add to Katie's peril, the doctor could not get the whole bug. Nine days later Holley went to her local physician, who removed six more pieces of the roach and then booked her an appointment with an ENT specialist to make sure that the bug carcass was out of her year.

But to Katie's horror, the ENT extracted the whole head, upper torso, extra limbs and the antennae.

"I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that so much of the roach sat in my ear for over a week and the potential infection I could have developed. I felt so lucky that my physician took the time to examine my ear again and spotted those stubborn pieces," she wrote.

After the incident, the couple got the pest control respray their house and Katie said that she cannot imagine sleeping without earplugs.