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A Florida man who suffered from nosebleeds was horrified to discover what was ‘bugging him’ ... literally.
Doctors at HCA Florida Memorial Hospital were shocked to find dozens of live bugs inside the patient’s nose and sinus cavity.
They said the man suffered from a rare condition known as ‘nasal myiasis,’ essentially defined as an infection or infestation of fly larvae.
“I started getting nose bleeds in October,” the unidentified man told First Coast News.
‘’I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom without my nose starting to bleed,” he added.
However, it wasn’t until his face and lips started swelling up in February that he decided to visit the hospital.
“When I went for the examination, the doctor said, ‘I see movement’,” the man recalled.
Dr David Carlson, who examined the man’s nose using a camera device, detected dozens of bugs feeding on the inside of the patient’s nose and sinus cavity. The pests were shedding tissue and excrement, which led to inflammation of his face.
“There were certain larvae inside the nose that were scurrying around and looking for places to feed and others that had burrowed into the tissue,” Dr Carlson said.
The doctor and his team attempted to extract the bugs using a suction method. However, it rapidly clogged up, and so they had to use a variety of tools instead to pluck them all out.
“And those little buggers didn’t want to get evicted,” Dr Carlson said.
The team finally removed 150 live bugs that were in their larva stage.
The First Coast News shared graphic footage from the operating room, which revealed the ghastly bugs crawling inside the man’s face, and its meticulous extraction.
“They were right up against his skull base, right under the brain, had they gone through that it could have killed him,” Dr Carlson explained.
The insects were sent to an epidemiologist for examination.
The man believes that the parasites invaded his body after handling dead fish.
“Before, I would rinse my hands in the river, now I’ll use cleaner to do a better job and not touch my nose or my hand,” he said.
Another factor that may have made the man more vulnerable to the attack was a cancerous tumour that was removed from his nose 30 years prior. He was left with open spaces in his nasal cavity, as well as a weakened immune system.
Dr Carlson said this was the first such case to have been reported in the US.
The man was prescribed a special anti-parasitic rinse for his nose and is expected to fully recover.
“The intent is not to create hysteria with viewers, but anyone with an immune system that’s compromised or less than optimal could be at risk for abnormal infections,” Dr Carlson said.
“If you’re going to be around a dirty environment, those hands need to be washed,” he added.
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