A nurse has shared her perspective on a medical emergency that she finds more alarming than cardiac distress.
Working in the emergency room often means encountering a range of severe injuries and life-threatening conditions.
Patients may be rushed in for various critical reasons, such as intense chest pain, respiratory difficulties, or discoloration indicating a lack of oxygen.
Signs of a stroke, including issues with balance, vision, facial drooping, limb weakness, or speech difficulties, are also common, alongside seizures, heart attacks, debilitating headaches, and various other distressing incidents like car accidents leading to heavy bleeding, severe burns, or major head or spinal injuries.
Yet, for nurse Natalie Beeson, known as Natalieexelise on TikTok, there’s a particular situation involving insects that she finds especially unsettling.
Addressing her 117,000 followers, she revealed: “The scariest thing I see as an ER nurse is, hands down, the number of live cockroaches that crawl in people’s ears.”
“This week alone I had two patients with cockroaches in their ears and, statistically speaking, I don’t love that,” she noted.
In a further explanation to the New York Post, Beeson mentioned she can manage cardiac issues throughout the day but has a strong aversion to dealing with bugs.
The extraction process involves using an anesthetic cream called lidocaine, which encourages the insects to exit the body on their own.
While having a cockroach in the ear isn’t typically painful, it can be a highly distressing experience, as many patients report both feeling and hearing the insect move.
“The primary goal in these cases is to kill the insect — many providers opt to use lidocaine for this,” Beeson explained.
“In fact, the patient I had last week had a roach crawl out of their ear after it was submerged in lidocaine.
“The provider calmly pulled it off their face and tossed it in the trash. I quickly ran out of the ER carrying the insect-filled trash bag.”
Beeson added: “The patient knew the roach had crawled into their ear and could actually hear and feel it moving around.
“Understandably, it was incredibly distressing. While they didn’t report any significant pain, there was clear discomfort and psychological distress.”
Although usually not painful, Beeson said cockroaches in unwanted places can potentially lead to a rupture or an infection.
“The ear canal has very thin skin — if an insect is scratching around, it could cause pain or inflammation,” she concluded.