On Tuesday, a 42-year-old Indian woman was fast asleep until she woke up around midnight to a tingling, crawling sensation in her right nostril.
Initially, the woman, named Selvi, brushed the sensation off assuming she had a case of the seasonal flu, but soon thereafter, she felt something move in her nasal cavity.
She spent the rest of the night in anxiety, waiting for the sun to rise so she could go to the hospital.
I could not explain the feeling but I was sure it was some insect. Whenever it moved, it gave me a burning sensation in my eyes, she told foreign media.
As the sun rose, she left to visit a clinic close to her home with her son-in law in Injambakkam, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
According to media reports, she was referred to a second and then a third hospital, where she was correctly diagnosed and was told that the discomfort she felt could be due to a a foreign body that seemed to be mobile in her nasal cavity.
Finally, on her fourth doctor visit over at Stanley Medical College Hospital, doctors found the root cause of the ordeal through endoscopy, which turned out to be a cockroach.
It was a full grown cockroach, M.N. Shankar, the head of the ear, nose and throat department, giving a statement to certain media outlets.
It was alive. And it didnt seem to want to come out, he added.
The insect was sitting in the skull base, between the eyes and close to the brain, Shankar said.
Doctors first tried to use a suction device to get rid of the cockroach, but the insect clutched on to the tissues. After a 45-minute extensive process, using suction and forceps, doctors were able to extract the bug, still alive.
Because of the critters location, doctors had to drag it to a place from which it could be extracted. It had been lodged inside for about 12 hours, according to media reports.
Doctors placed the insect in a container, its wings spread and legs moving rapidly.
If left inside, it would have died before long and the patient would have developed infection, which would have spread to the brain, Shankar added.
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