After retuning from a holiday in Peru, Rochelle Harris started hearing scratching noises in her head. Harris recalled pulling a fly from her ear while in Peru, but took no notice of it. After she had returned to the UK, the Brit got pains down the one side of her face and she started to get headaches. One morning she woke up to discover liquid on her pillow.

The woman went to the Royal Derby Hospital in northern England to have her ear checked thinking her symptoms were a result of an ear infection. But Harris was mistaken when a consultant saw flesh eating maggots in her ear canal. The first attempt to remove the maggots from her ear was to use olive oil to flush them out, but that failed. Harris said:

I was very scared. Were they in my brain?

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.

The second attempt was to have the maggots surgically removed from her ear, doctors found eight maggots and it was found that a New World Army Screw Worm fly had laid the eggs in Harris’ ears. Harris said:

I’m not so squeamish around those kinds of bugs now. How can I be? They’ve been in my ear!

[Source: Reuters]