Ear!
An interesting case was presented in the New England Journal of Medicine the other day: “A Spider and Its Exoskeleton in the Ear Canal,” by physicians in Tainan Municipal Hospital, Tainan City, Taiwan.
A 64-year-old woman with hypertension presented to an ENT clinic in Taiwan with a 4-day history of abnormal sounds in her left ear that caused her trouble sleeping. On the day of symptom onset, she had awoken to the feeling of a creature moving inside her left ear. Subsequent incessant beating, clicking, and rustling sounds had led to insomnia.
A physical exam revealed a small spider moving in her external auditory canal. Believe it or not, this beast had even shed an exoskeleton. The external auditory canal connects the outer ear to the inner and middle ear. Her tympanic membrane, which separates the outer ear from the middle ear, was totally normal, according to the report.
Dr. Tengchin Wang, co-author and director of the otolaryngology department at Tainan Municipal Hospital:
She didn’t feel pain because the spider was very small—about a tenth of an inch. I’ve seen ants, moths, cockroaches and mosquitoes in people’s ears. But this was novel because I’ve never seen an insect molt inside an ear canal before.”
(I’ve personally seen a dead cockroach inside a child’s ear that I had to remove in bits and pieces!)
A suction cannula place into an otoscope (the device that goes into your ear in ear exams) was used to remove the spider because it was quite small. (For bigger creatures in the ear, they usually needed to be killed by instilling lidocaine or ethanol before removal, in order to prevent excessive movements and subsequent damage to the structures of the ear.)
Once the spider was removed, the woman’s symptoms immediately stopped. A total cure.
Could it happen to you? Probably, but it’s pretty rare, though your average ENT doctor will encounter tens, if not more, of bugs or some sort of arthropod inside the ear over their career.
That said, Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, Ph.D., an urban entomologist and coordinator with the New York State Integrated Pest Management community program at Cornell University, remarked encouragingly:
A spider in your ear isn’t the most common way crawling creatures work their way into our systems. Honestly, we all probably eat more insects in processed foods than through any other means.”
So good to know! I feel reassured now!
In fact, even the Bible tells us to keep our ears open, to listen to the voice of God (“listen” as in give ear, and heed and obey, of course).
God says:
“Listen, My people, and I will remonstrate with you—
Israel, if you would [only] listen to Me.
Let there not be among you a strange god;
and you shall not worship a foreign god.
I am Yahweh, your God,
who brought you up from the land of Egypt;
open wide your mouth wide and I will fill it.
And My people did not listen to My voice,
and Israel did not [want to] submit to Me.
And I sent him [off] to the stubbornness of their heart:
they can walk by their own plans.
Would that My people would listen to Me,
[and] Israel would walk in My paths.
Quickly their enemies I would subdue,
and against their adversaries turn My hand. …
And I would feed you from the best of wheat,
and [with] honey from the rock I would satiate you.”
Psalm 81:8–14, 16
God waits to bless … if only we listen!
SOURCE: Today.com; New England Journal of Medicine
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.