Posted on 07/19/2013 3:36:34 PM PDT by rickmichaels
LONDON - A British woman returned from a holiday in Peru hearing scratching noises inside her head to be told she was being attacked by flesh-eating maggots living inside her ear.
Rochelle Harris, 27, said she remembered dislodging a fly from her ear while in Peru but thought nothing more of it until she started getting headaches and pains down one side of her face and woke up in Britain one morning with liquid on her pillow.
Thinking she had a routine ear infection caused by a mosquito bite, she sought medical treatment at the Royal Derby Hospital in northern England, where a consultant noticed maggots in a small hole in her ear-canal.
"I was very scared. Were they in my brain?" said Harris, recounting her ordeal in a new Discovery Channel documentary series called "Bugs, Bites and Parasites" to be aired in the UK from July 21.
Doctors tried first to flush the maggots out of the ear using olive oil.
"It was the longest few hours that I have ever had to wait... I could still feel them and hear them and knowing what those scratching sounds were, and knowing what that wriggling feeling was, that just made it all the worse," she said.
When flushing the maggots out failed, the medics resorted to surgery and found a "writhing mass of maggots" within her ear, raising concern they could eat into her brain.
The surgery removed a family of eight maggots. Analysis found that a New World Army Screw Worm fly had laid eggs inside Harris's ear.
"I'm not so squeamish around those kinds of bugs now. How can I be? They've been in my ear!" Harris said.
You might be thinking of Candiru, in South America.
Coogans Bluff
Khaaaaaannnnn!!!!!
Lawrence Harvey was the principal actor.
I hear you. Hey, the mosquitoes feast on me annually. I grew up in NYC and regularly got mosquito bites in February and November. But I do hate bugs! I’d go to Africa, but I think the Amazon, etc. are right out!
I’m glad your kids turned out OK, mine too, that is the best thing; and no matter what one might like to think, it’s a gift from God.
“So say one of these things invades Obama’s brain by the ear: will he get smarter or dumber?”
Obama or the maggot?
LOL! I remember that!
I herewith rescind my suggestion that George Zimmerman should go to his mother’s native Peru.
I thought I had flesh eating maggots, but it turns out I was just listening to Barbara Streisand.
OK now I remember that phrase.... but what TV episode was it? Twilight zone? Thriller? Chiller? (yes, I’m showing my years)
Ooops I didn’t read to #10...
Twilight zone is right .....
Gaaah!
Checkov in Wrath of Khan crossed my mind
that’s only if you pee in the water. and they’ll do it to women too. the ammonia attracts them.
My post 7 wasn’t close to a quote, but from memory I was trying to capture enough to remind people of the story.
That was one creepy tale, and a wonderfully creepy ending.
Holy crap! I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Oh, thanks, now I am itchy all over. Yuck!
I remember that one.
But the one about “good news we got it/ bad news, it was female” is the one from twilight zone, right? I remembered the phrase but not what show....
I think I was once served those on a sashimi plate in Japan.
“New World Army Screw Worm”
Who named this insect?
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