In the UK, a young man with a phobia of spiders removed one from his ear after feeling itchy and dizzy for several hours. He recounted his misadventure on Facebook on October 9.
His worst nightmare has come true. Liam Gomez, a 27-year-old Brit living in Kent (UK), who is phobic about spiders, found one in his ear when he was suffering from dizziness and itching. He recounts his misadventure on Facebook.
On October 9, the young man woke up with blocked ears and dizziness. “I put a few drops of olive oil in my ears and went back to sleep for a bit. I felt a tickling sensation in my left ear, but figured it was just the oil doing the its magic”, he says on the social network a few hours later.
But, once his nap is over, the Briton still feels bad. What’s more, his ear itches. He decides to “probe with a cotton swab and a hairpin”. “The cotton swab came out relatively clean except for one leg,” he wrote in his post, along with a photo of an “eight-legged abomination.” “Now I try not to cry or vomit”, he writes before concluding with a touch of irony: “if it’s eggs laid, know that I regret nothing, and that I never really loved only a few of you”.
“Spid-ear-man”
The day before the incident, Liam had discovered a nest of spiders above his front door. He then cleared it with a broom and went to bed. “I can only assume that one of the spiders from the nest I cleaned must have crawled into my ear during the night – maybe as revenge!” he dramatizes to the DailyMail.
Shocked by this experience, the young man now calls himself “Spid-ear-man” (ear meaning ear in English) and swears never to sleep without earmuffs again. In the meantime, his hearing has returned to normal.
This story is reminiscent of that of a Chinese man who, in May, had to go to the hospital because he had the feeling that he was “walking on all fours in his ear”. The video of the doctor finding a spider in his ear canal had gone viral and horrified internet users around the world.
What to do when it happens?
Yet, as these two incidents prove, such cases are not uncommon. “I’ve seen spiders weave a web in an ear canal before. Small moths and flying insects can also get in there,” says Erich Voigt, a physician at NYU Langone Health. “Cockroaches tend to get stuck inside and scratch the eardrum with their front legs,” he says.
If you ever have the misfortune to find yourself with an object or animal stuck in your ear, don’t be like Liam Gomez. Go quickly to the doctor to gently remove the intruder. Call beforehand to check if it is equipped to perform the operation in the best possible conditions. Doing it alone can lead to duct injuries, burns or superinfections (otitis externa). As an insect in the ear can be very anxiety-provoking and embarrassing, it is possible to drown it with water to wait until the medical visit. To do this, it is necessary to tilt the head to the side in order to achieve an optimal ear bath.
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