After a terrible sleep, I raised my head and noticed drops of blood on my pillow. My earache must have been more serious than I thought. In January this year, my husband and I had been trekking in one of South Africa’s national parks. For the last few days of the trip, my ear hadn’t felt right and was extremely itchy, but I had put it down to travel running down my immune system.
We flew home to Singapore. I was hoping the irritation would settle, but after six days I couldn’t ignore the pain any more. That night, as I was about to go to bed, I told my husband that I was going to go to the doctors. He sprang off the sofa, as if a lightbulb had gone off in his head.
“You should use my otoscope,” he said. I laughed, confused as to what that was, or why he even had it. It turns out an otoscope is a device that uses light to let you see inside the ear canal. My husband bought one online for $20 after having problems with his ear. His has a teeny camera on the end of it – you can download an app and view live footage of what it’s seeing.
We sat on the sofa at 10pm watching the footage as the otoscope rooted around in my ear. We both squinted as we came across what looked like some hard black bubbles and dried blood. At first I thought maybe it was a scab, but my stomach lurched when we saw something move.
We looked at each other, horrified. I felt as if I was a character in a disturbing sci-fi film. “We need to go to A&E immediately,” my husband said. I argued against it, adamant that what we were seeing could just be a scab, but he was suspicious that it could be a tick.
Turning up at A&E, I was worried that it was a bit over-the-top to have come in the first place. “I think I might have an insect in my ear,” I told the triage doctor. He looked at me, baffled, and pulled out his otoscope to have a look. He scratched his head as he explained that there was definitely something in there, but he couldn’t confirm what it was.
We waited nervously for two hours while they located an ear, nose and throat specialist. It was now past midnight. I was taken into a room with a large screen. A small camera was placed in my ear, and the footage was shown on screen in high definition. Everyone gasped. Writhing around in my ear was a tick. It was surrounded by eight babies. With its long spindly legs, it looked like a crab.
The doctor gulped before saying that in 30 years he’d never seen something living in someone’s ear before. He told us the tick was too difficult to get with regular tweezers, and he had to make sure to remove the whole body so nothing remained lodged inside. He said it was lucky that I had come to A&E that evening. The tick was so close to my eardrum that if it had stayed in there any longer it could have done serious damage.
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For the next hour, the doctor tried to prise the tick away. Its head was embedded in my skin. My ear grew very painful; the tugging sensation inflamed my skin. The tick was still alive and moving when the doctor pulled it out an hour later. The babies were easier to remove, as they weren’t so deep. They were hoovered up and almost too small to see. I was so relieved when it was over.
The doctor put the mother in a tiny test tube and we sat there in shock. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. My husband and I firmly shook our heads at the offer of taking it home. I was given some antibiotics, though the pain in my ear went away almost instantly after it was removed.
I messaged everyone I knew, desperate to laugh about it. Knowing I was fine, everyone found it hilarious – they were more shocked that my husband had an otoscope just lying around. My health insurance nearly didn’t cover it. They didn’t know how to process a claim involving having an insect giving birth in your ear.
I do feel guilty for breaking up a family inside my ear, but I feel lucky that my husband’s otoscope convinced us to go to A&E and saved me from permanent damage. It’s a really strange thing to go through, but since I have had no lasting side-effects I’m thankful that I can just laugh about it now.
As told to Elizabeth McCafferty
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