Aussie woman's 'HORRIFIC' find inside her ear at 3am
The woman was celebrating the new year with a caravan trip when she got a 'creepy' wake up call.
An Aussie woman has described the “downright horrific” moment she woke up to something crawling in her ear while celebrating the new year on a camping trip.
Kirsty Barge and her husband Chris, from Perth, drove their vintage yellow caravan named Wattle a couple hours south last weekend to make the most of their time off work. But the holiday took a “creepy” turn at around 3am on Monday, leaving the 35-year-old “shrieking and jumping up and down”.
Ms Barge told Yahoo News Australia she woke up to go to the toilet and had just fallen back asleep when she suddenly felt something climbing into her ear.
“I thought a moth had flown into my ear so I sat up and shook my head and it went in more,” she said, describing the moment she “freaked out” and woke up her husband.
After an initial panic, the couple fumbled for the light switch and Chris used the torch on his phone to look in his wife’s ear, confirming there was “something in there”. “The sound and the feeling of it was awful,” Ms Barge said.
In an attempt to remove the creature, the 35-year-old placed her head over the sink as Chris poured water into her ear, but it just burrowed further into the canal. “Nothing to get it out worked, it just went in as far as it could go,” she said, explaining it was then she had a “brain wave” and remembered there were tweezers in the caravan.
“He pulled something out and dropped it in the sink and I looked over and saw this bug leg in the sink,” Ms Barge said. “I jumped because it felt disgusting.” After some more manoeuvring, Chris was able to pull out the culprit — roughly a 4cm cockroach — and flush it down the drain.
“I just sat on the floor deep-breathing with my dog thinking ‘oh my god that happened’,” she recalled. “I couldn’t fall asleep for ages. I slept on one ear and had the blanket over the other.”
The Perth resident said that while the incident still haunts her, she is glad the roach was big enough to be removed and the couple weren’t forced to drive on dangerous gravel tracks from their camping spot to the hospital.
'Most excruciating pain ever'
In an attempt to warn others to keep their first aid kits up to date when travelling around Australia, Ms Barge posted a photo of her “new mate” on a Facebook group dedicated to camping and caravans.
“Have everything you could possibly need on hand in an emergency. And a reminder that emergencies aren’t just limited to accidental injuries!” she said before detailing the encounter.
Hundreds of people were quick to share their own stories, with one woman revealing a bug lived in her ear for two weeks after a doctor's misdiagnosis. “Most excruciating pain ever,” she said.
“Had a moth do that to me once … far out it is one of the worst things ever … scratching away on the ear drum, throwing your balance,” someone else wrote.
“I had a huge black one go into my ear, even oil didn’t get it out. Had several visits in the doctors surgery where only fragments were removed. One doctor was finally brave enough to extract it with tweezers, he doubled over laughing when he saw how big it was,” another person added.
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Numerous other people, some of which said they had worked in emergency rooms, suggested using warm vegetable or olive oil to help bugs “float out”.
“Yep same happened to me. We went to ER middle of the night and the doctor poured oil in my ear. He explained that some bugs can live in water but not oil,” someone said.
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