The young man was admitted to Sanhe Hospital in China’s Guangdong Province in October and told doctors that his family had already shone a light in his ear and observed what looked like a large insect nesting within.

  “He said his ear hurt a lot like something was scratching or crawling inside,” said Dr. Yijin. “It caused a lot of discomfort.” Doctors then looked inside his ear (see video below) and confirmed what was surely his worst fears. 

“I discovered more than 10 cockroach babies inside,” said Dr. Zhong Yijin. “They were already running around.”

In order to remove them, doctors essentially used a simple pair of tweezers small enough to do the job and pull out each cockroach one by one. Mr. Lv was soon rid of all the hatched cockroach babies and the mother that had laid their eggs. 

While the patient was actually rather lucky — the egg case of a German cockroach (Blattella germanica) usually contains 30 to 40 eggs — he was also at least partially responsible for this problem in the first place.