A caravanner has spoken of her horror at waking while on a camping adventure to find a large cockroach burrowing into her ear.
The ABC reports that Kirsty Barge, was holidaying with her husband Chris in the WA shire of Collie, when she felt something entering her right ear in the middle of the night.
The couple had set up camp in a remote area, about 35 minutes’ drive over rough roads to the nearest town … and Ms Barge admits she went into ‘meltdown’.
“It felt like a moth or something had flown into my ear, so that’s when I’ve sat up and started shaking my head,” Ms Barge said.
But it would not come out.
Olive oil or baby oil will kill cockcroaches. PIC: Picas Joe / Pexels
The ABC reports that the couple tried flooding the ear with water over their caravan’s sink, but that only forced the insect in further.
They resorted to a pair of tweezers and were lucky not to damage her ear drum.
“I’m trying to calm myself down because I was just having this full meltdown,” Ms Barge said. “My husband, he pulled a little bit and said, ‘Ooh, that’s a leg’, and dropped it in the sink … and then he tried again and that’s when I could feel him dragging it out.”
According to the ABC, Ms Barge said the cockroach was more than three centimetres long.
“It hurt, it was horrible, honestly it was horrendous, It was so disgusting,” she said. “I counted its legs and antennae to make sure I didn’t have any surprises in my ear later and then started dry retching again and threw it down the sink.”
Maroochydore-based ear, nose and throat specialist Adam Blond told the ABC that insects entering ears were more common than people thought … and the rate increased during warm holiday seasons when people camp with lights outside.
“Small cockroaches are really common, occasionally spiders, but more likely mozzies and moths get caught in there,” Dr Blond said. “If you try to get them out or put water in behind them, a lot of them tend to dig the barbs on their feet and their legs into the side of your ear and push themselves further down into your ear drum, which is the most sensitive part.”
He recommended turning lights off and shining a torch to the outside of the affected ear to see if the insect was small enough to come out on its own.
“You’ll know if it’s out,” he said. “If you do the torch trick, and it comes running out itself, you’ll actually feel the release and it’s completely gone.”
If that fails, Dr Blond told the ABC that the simplest and safest approach was to smother the insects by putting drops of room temperature baby oil or olive oil into the ear, before seeking medical help.
“Oil suffocates them and stops them from moving around and they’re essentially dead,” he said. “It’s the movement that drives you crazy. It’s incredibly noisy and painful.”
The specialist told the ABC that, most of the time, it was not the insects, but misguided first aid responses, that caused serious complications.
“The problems that that you see are when people are trying to get them out — so, traumatising and rupturing the ear drum with the tweezers,” Dr Blond said.
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Remote camping in outback South Australia. A mozzie flew into my ear in the middle of the night. It was buzzing like crazy! Couldn’t remove it. Drowned it. Got the nurse at Birdsville to remove it the next day. Antibiotics in case.
At midnight I had a moth in my ear when camping at Oma waterhole Isisford QLD. A call to Blackall Hospital suggested the torch method which did not work so they said to call the Isisford 24 hr emergency medical centre. So a very slow trip into the medical centre avoiding the many kangaroos. Lignocaine was used to kill the moth then lots of water to flush it out – to no avail but at least the moth had stopped fluttering . After an hour of flushing the nurse went home and got some cooking oil and repeated the flushing regime. Another 30 minutes and it was finally out. Thankgoodness the oil worked otherwise it was an 80 km trip to Blackall – not a drive to look forward to at 2am.