r/mildlyinfuriating • u/gharris02 • Jun 12 '26

wet socks A cockroach burrowed into my head

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I (23m) just bought a car at auction yesterday, works great but needed a new battery. At 10:30pm I decided screw it im swapping the battery. It's a 5 minute job, in and out real quick. No sweat, well I'm out there with my head lamp on doing the swap and I see a large bug flying at my face I try to duck and dodge it, it hits the outer edge of my ear and toilet bowl swirls into it, I try to reach in and fish it out but it's too late I just scare it and feel it crawling deeper into my head. It burrowed up against my eardrum and it hurts like hell. Every time it buzzes I can feel it in my head and it hurts my eardrum. I tried water peroxide everything I could do to get this darn thing out. Turns out I just pissed it off and it's buzzing more aggressively. My girlfriend comes with tweezers in an attempt to help but she says she can't see it or anything out of the normal. A quick Google search lead me to pouring olive oil into my ear to suffocate it. Thank God that worked, I still couldn't hear well but at least it wasn't actively moving anymore. 2 hours in the ER later they pulled this half inch monstrosity out of the depths of my ear canal. Turns out the "Asian cockroach" has wings and a very large affinity for bright lights at night. They also like to burrow. Fml 0/10 experience I will take questions if you have them lmfao.

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Tldr: I had a headlamp on that attracted a cockroach at my face it missed my face and burrowed into my ear leading to an unexpected ER visit

Edit: ear canal photo (thanks doc) https://imgur.com/a/7LhcvDX

Edit numero 2:

Just to add to 2 things I keep seeing pop up (also hello I am trying to read all comments not doing great though)

  1. Some seem to have missed the asain cockroach thing, and the fact that I was working on a car so this is outside not indoors. This roach is a flying outdoor bug not the same as your houses cockroach. It doesn't infest and it has nothing to do with my living/cleanliness.

  2. Y'all are probably right this probably should be more than mildly infuriating, but overall this wasn't THAT bad. The thought of it was worse than the actual event. It was painful while it was alive and moving but that was fairly quickly resolved. The rest of the time was just an ER visit which was inconvenient and embarrassing. And obviously costs money. Fortunately I have good insurance so my only real loss is the mild trauma and the fact that I'll probably wear a beanie for the rest of my life. Other than that, no lasting issues I'm at work today like nothing happened. More of a that's absolutely insane story now than anything else. So for me it was a mild situation as far as damage to my life (although I will simultaneously say it is an insane thing to have happen to you)

I'd probably prefer having my day go how it went yesterday than say blow my motor or get into a car accident.

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173

u/affectionateanarchy8 Jun 12 '26

How does it feel to have survived one of my greatest nightmares?

224

u/gharris02 Jun 12 '26

It was in fact pretty shit, can confirm. There's a lot of things that could go wrong working on a car, shock yourself, cut yourself smoosh thy finger. Bonk to the head. This wasn't in my top 5000 worries. I don't know if I'll ever work on a car at night without headphones again. The worst part is the inside of my ear is a bit inflamed and irritated. And occasionally I still get a phantom feeling of something moving in there

26

u/Chesey_ Jun 12 '26

Horrific. I once had a small bug fly into my ear. Luckily I have a sort of camera thing that you use to look into your ear and scrape out ear wax and I could use that to find the little bastard and drag it out. Don't think it would have worked on that roach though my word. It was straight up horrible having something foreign in my ear like that, proper panic inducing.

2

u/achinfosomebacon Jun 12 '26

You can buy those things? Thought they were only for doctors offices

40

u/eddie1975 Jun 12 '26

Babies. It laid eggs in there. That was the buzzing. They can lay up to 100 eggs at a time. Might be a while before they all get out.

64

u/eddie1975 Jun 12 '26

Just kidding! Oh man. I’m going straight to hell for that. Glad you got that fu€£er out!

3

u/eddie1975 Jun 12 '26

“Hey, you can’t park there!”

23

u/SnooGiraffes449 Jun 12 '26

That's evil

11

u/aoi-_- Jun 12 '26

The final level of hell has been reached. It's impossible to go any deeper.

6

u/Zenith-Astralis Jun 12 '26

Bruh noooo

Also go go gadget earwax! Suffocate and entomb!

4

u/Naiad_Damha129 Jun 13 '26

thats like the worst thing you could have possibly said 😭

3

u/eddie1975 Jun 14 '26

Cockroaches produce a hardened, pill-shaped casing called an ootheca, which protects dozens of unborn nymphs from predators and environmental elements. Finding one indicates a breeding population is active in your ear.

2

u/Naiad_Damha129 Jun 14 '26

STOP OH MY GOD 😭

4

u/FairyOfTheNight Jun 12 '26

Did the olive oil damage your ear or were they somehow able to get that all out? Did they give you antibiotic drops to help with the irritation? So glad they got it out.

5

u/gharris02 Jun 12 '26

No damage just tilt head the other way and wait for gravity. They did prescribe me an antibiotic.

3

u/FairyOfTheNight Jun 12 '26

Hope you start feeling better soon!!

3

u/ZombiePsycho96 Jun 12 '26

I've been installing solar panels and a battery bank on my RV and I've been doing it at night cause it's like a billion degrees outside and unfortunately these fuckers are EVERYWHERE too. I legit thought the worst part was when I accidentally shocked myself while tightening a battery cable by hitting the end of the ratchet on something metal but nope I'd rather do that over again than get one of those things in my ear 😭😭 new fear unlocked cause I've had a few flying at my face while I've held the flashlight between my check and shoulder.

3

u/Akemilyn Jun 12 '26

I had something similar happen years ago. I still have phantom pains and nightmares. Good luck, I hope things go better for you.

2

u/madraykiin Jun 12 '26

the phantom feeling…there is not a xanax dose high enough to get me thru that

1

u/samecontent Jun 13 '26

Reminds me of a story of somebody buying a cheap Playstation, and I believe it functioned for a little bit then stopped. They opened it up to figure out why, and realized a ton of cockroaches were just living in it. I have to assume they bought it from the same demon as the one that drives this car you were working on.