A woman experienced the stuff of nightmares when she discovered the itchy ear pain she had was actually a tick and its eight offspring.
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The woman, identified as Rosie Swaine, revealed more details about her nightmare-ish incident in an op-ed with The Guardian. She and her husband had traveled through one of South Africa’s national parks. Following the trip, she began to experience intense ear pain. After a rough night of sleep, she woke up to find drops of blood on her pillow.
“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,” she wrote.
She and her husband then flew home to Singapore, where she had hoped the ear irritation would settle. However, after nearly a week, she couldn’t ignore the pain any longer. When she told her husband it may be time to see a doctor, he said she should use an otoscope, which uses light to see inside an ear canal. He had purchased one for $20 after having an issue with his own 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,” she wrote. “We sat on the sofa at 10 pm 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.”
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After her husband stated they needed to go see a doctor immediately, Swaine argued against it, claiming she thought it was just a scab in her ear and nothing more. He suspected it could be a tick. After waiting hours at the A&E, the couple was met with an ear, nose, and throat specialist.
“A small camera was placed in my ear, and the footage was shown on screen in high definition,” she stated. “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.”
Turns out, her husband was correct. The black bubbles they saw causing her ear pain turned out to be a tick and its nearly dozen offspring.
“[The doctor] said it was lucky that I had come to A&E that evening,” Swaine stated. “The tick was so close to my eardrum that if it had stayed in there any longer it could have done serious damage.”
The doctors attempted to prise the tick away from the ear, but its head was embedded in her skin. “My ear grew very painful,” Swaine continued. “The tugging sensation inflamed my skin. The tick was still alive and moving when the doctor pulled it out an hour later.”
She further pointed out that the tick’s “babies” were easier to remove since they weren’t so deep. “They were hoovered up and almost too small to see. I was so relieved when it was over.”
The ear pain went away almost instantly and she was given antibiotics.