An Indiana man was left screaming from what doctors thought was a drug-fueled breakdown, until they discovered a bug lurking in his ear.
Father-of-one Brendan Doyle had fallen asleep on the couch last week when he woke to hearing sharp scratches in his right ear.
The panicked 31-year-old immediately screamed, ‘there’s something in my ear,’ causing his wife Ciera, 32, to race to his side.
The couple rushed to the hospital where Doyle’s screaming fits left nurses and doctors convinced he was taking drugs.
He said: ‘They thought I was going crazy and they asked me if I’d taken any drugs so it felt like they thought I was having a psychotic episode.’
But it was only when the nurses looked in the factory worker’s ear that they noticed a two-inch black beetle nestled inside.
The hour-long agony of the bug ‘pinching’ Doyle’s inner ear made him ‘lose it,’ until nurses were able to kill it and remove it with ointment and a cotton ball.
‘It was awful,’ Doyle said. ‘Every sound that it makes is amplified because of how close it is to your ear, and it had pinchers so it was pinching the inside of my ear over and over.’
Brendan Doyle (pictured above with wife Ciera) was left screaming in pain due to a bug that had crawled in his ear while he slept
Pictured above is the beetle found in Doyle’s ear
The couple bought the sofa Doyle had been sleeping on a week earlier and suspect the beetle crawled inside while it was at the warehouse.
Bugs like beetles are often attracted to light, warmth or moisture, which can lead them to making a home inside of a person’s ear. This is most often true for cockroaches, which are attracted to volatile fatty acids released by earwax.
These bugs also explore most often at night, when people are sleeping, which increases the risk of them becoming unwelcome residents in a person’s ear.
Sleeping near a window or living in an area with a high insect population like Florida, Texas or Louisiana also makes this more likely.
The bugs often nestle so deeply inside that they can’t get out on their own, which may lead them to pinching and clawing the ear.
People with a bug lurking in their ear may also suffer swelling, a foul smell or ear drainage, hearing loss or a fever.
To remove the critter, Stanford Medicine recommends tilting one’s hear to the side and gently shaking it. Pouring a small amount of vegetable oil in the ear can help suffocate the bug if it’s still alive, and if it’s dead, try flushing it out with warm water.
Avoid using tweezers or cotton swabs, as they may push the insect further inside the ear.
The circled portion of the above image shows where in Doyle’s ear the bug had nestled
Left untreated, the bug may perforate an eardrum, leading to pain, dizziness or ringing in the ears, also called tinnitus.
After removing the beetle from Doyle’s ear, nurses reportedly asked if he wanted to keep it, which he immediately declined.
He now insists on spraying his home regularly with insect repellent to reduce the risk of a repeated incident. Controlling moisture around the home and keeping it clean also lowers the risk.
Social media users reacting to Doyle’s Facebook post about the incident were horrified.
One said: ‘I would have passed out from being so scared!’
A second added: ‘This is what nightmares are made of.’
‘Great, now I’m putting ear plugs in permanently,’ another said.