In what can only be described as a nightmare-come-true, a spider crawled inside a woman's ear canal and lived there for five days before doctors extracted it.
The woman, referred to only as Ms. Lee, arrived at China's Changsha Central Hospital of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery on Aug. 8, RedNet News notes. She complained of an itchy ear and was hoping doctors could treat her.
When Dr. Liu Sheng took a look inside, he found a spider living in the woman's ear canal. Apparently, the spider had crawled into Ms. Lee's ear while she slept.
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The doctor and his colleagues decided to force the spider out of the woman's ear canal with a saline solution, as they worried that attempting to take the living spider out with equipment would only cause it to drill its barbs deeper, the report notes.
A photo of the woman's ear was posted to Reddit by user Psycho0222. Within the Reddit thread, another user recounts a similar incident in which a spider crawled out of his or her ear in the shower.
Last year, a Colorado boy was rushed to the emergency room after a moth flew into his ear while he was trying to sleep. Doctors tried to use water to remove the moth but eventually had to extract the bug with a tool, according to a 9News report. It came out alive.
As scary as it might sound, insects will crawl into an ear for shelter.
"The insects are probably entering the canal as harborage, for heat, and/or for moisture," Philip Koehler, an entomology professor at the University of Florida, told The Huffington Post last year.
Sleep tight!
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to this image as an X-ray. The camera used was not identified.
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