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Try not to squirm: Live cockroach plucked from woman's skull

Watch at your own risk. The creepy-crawly menace is real and apparently there's no place a cockroach won't venture.

Eric Mack Contributing Editor
Eric Mack has been a CNET contributor since 2011. Eric and his family live 100% energy and water independent on his off-grid compound in the New Mexico desert. Eric uses his passion for writing about energy, renewables, science and climate to bring educational content to life on topics around the solar panel and deregulated energy industries. Eric helps consumers by demystifying solar, battery, renewable energy, energy choice concepts, and also reviews solar installers. Previously, Eric covered space, science, climate change and all things futuristic. His encrypted email for tips is ericcmack@protonmail.com.
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Eric Mack

Forget Freddy Krueger, there's a new reason never to go to sleep again. A 42-year-old domestic helper in Chennai, India, woke in the middle of the night to a "crawling sensation" in her nostril.

Wait, the story gets so much worse.

According to the Indian Express newspaper, the woman felt an extremely painful "tingling, crawling sensation" behind her eyes. She visited a local clinic and was referred to a hospital, where a nasal endoscopy revealed a cockroach casually sitting on the woman's skull between her eyes.

What happened next was a grotesque moment of insect liberation captured in the nightmare-fueling video above.

"If left inside, it would have died before long and the patient would have developed infection which would have spread to the brain," Dr. M. N. Shankar of the Stanley Medical College Hospital told the paper. He added that he'd never seen anything like it.

Well, great. So everything turned out OK for the woman and the bug, which can be seen at the end of the video crawling around in a petri dish of some kind. The only thing lost is future countless nights of sleep for humanity.

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