The situation started in an unusual way and evolved from there. I was asked to help out a dear friend with a delicate family issue. She sheepishly admitted she needed my assistance cleaning out her grandmother’s home. With undeserved embarrassment, she confessed that she was a ‘hoarder’.
I’d watched the shows. The range of those cleanup projects runs from slightly cluttered, to fully impassable and hideous. I wasn’t sure how bad her grandmother’s place was inside, but none of that bore any effect on how I felt about my friend herself or her family. Her reluctance to ask for my help was unnecessary. Friends help out their friends.
I met her at the location for an initial walkthrough to access what we would need for the cleanup. I’ll admit, it was pretty bad but I’m not afraid to suit up in protective gear and get things done. With her, myself, and her brother tacking the project one room at a time, you could see the progress as we made it. Starting in the garage, we sifted through thigh-deep piles of clothing, assorted boxes, unopened items from a discount clearance store, and thousands of other miscellaneous things.
I suggested we spray our clothes with insect repellent and wrap our pants legs and sleeves with duct tape to prevent being bitten by any creepy-crawlies we encountered, but none of us has any idea what we were getting into. The black widow spiders stood out because they have a distinctive look. I was much more worried about brown recluses. They aren’t easy to spot and offer a far-worse bite.
Obviously there were many other undesirable creatures inside the piles of things. We wore gloves and face masks but there were small gaps occasionally between our long sleeve shirts or protective clothing. Rodent droppings, random webs, silverfish, and untold insects were everywhere. In all, we witnessed dozens of black widows and unidentified egg sacks. It made us hesitant to even reach into dark corners or to pick up items to discard, but we had a job to do.
After finishing up for the afternoon, I bade my fellow cleanup workers adieu and drove home in haste. The whole time, I envisioned the glory of the hot water from my shower blasting away the gross, filthy residue off my skin and grimy body. I disrobed, tossed my grungy clothes and hat in the washing machine, and stepped in to finally ‘decontaminate’.
It felt so good to wash all that away. I stepped out and dried off. In my mind, I was clean again and free of anything lurking in that garage. My clothes had been washed, and so had my external body. I felt relaxed and fantastic, until a pervasive tingling inside my left ear erased that fleeting feeling of calm. After that, I could focus on nothing else. I cursed myself for driving home while wearing my work hat and coat. In the morbid theater of my mind, I imagined what must’ve happened.
The random, fluttering ‘tickle’ inside my ear canal demanded I address it immediately; and to the inclusion of all else. My probing index finger would involuntarily explore the fleshy folds of my external ear, hoping to discover and extricate a gnat, or beetle, or flea. ANYTHING but a harry little spider; but no matter how often or faithfully I addressed the uncomfortable sensation plaguing me, I could find no relief. It persisted, while my fear and paranoia grew.
As unpleasant as it was to consider, if there was a spider of any breed hiding in my ear canal, I didn’t want to cause it to retreat deeper inside my head, to evade my attempts to remove it. I also didn’t want to kill it and leave parts of its smushed body in me. As grotesque as that idea might be, the thought of a foreign eight-legged menace nesting in my head pressed me to push past my queasiness to ‘evict the unwanted tenant’.
A cotton swab was delicately worked into my ear canal. Understandably, urgency precipitated a balance between ‘safe’, and: “My god! There’s a freaking spider crawling around in my damn ear!” The shaft of the swab was straight. The canal was not. It failed to strike pay-dirt. At times I would feel distinctive movement. It was enough to make a person want to faint or scream in full-blown heebie-jeebies. Other times there would be nothing whatsoever to indicate the likelihood of a foreign organism living inside my ear, like an arachnid cavern.
I wanted to believe it was in my imagination. I really did but the horrific tingling sensation was too frequent to ignore. I didn’t have any ear drops and was too frantic and distracted to drive. For the longest time, I couldn’t even bring myself to call someone for help because I’d have to say the words. In my fragile state, I deluded myself into thinking if I didn’t articulate the terrifying truth, it wouldn’t be real.
Just when I’d finally calm down and my heart would quit racing, the incessant itch would start back up again! To make matters worse, my sadistic imagination conjured up the dreadful idea that an egg sac inside me would soon rupture and hundreds of tiny offspring would spring out! I wanted to violently jam a butcher knife directly into my ear and gouge it out, but I had to remain rational and hope for the best. It was unimaginable torture.
Finally, I’d had enough. I called a neighbor for help but asked that I be allowed to avoid explaining why I needed emergency medical attention. They were obviously curious but to their credit, they honored my request and drove me to the ER in discreet silence. The ride was uncomfortable but honestly, nothing comes to mind as being worse than having a living spider explore my ear canal.
Was it a Black Widow? A Brown Recluse? An ordinary ‘harmless’ spider? I didn’t give a damn about the species. Not at all! I just wanted it out of my head immediately, as anyone would. They flushed out my ear canal with a special wash-station and extracted my personal eight-legged tormentor. There was the tiny devil, lifelessly floating in the tray! Sweet vindication. At last it was confirmed that I wasn’t imagining things. Then I had to process the ugly truth. A wave of revulsion hit me.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the doctor on-call actually brought in several nurses and medical staff, to use my personal hell as a teaching tool! He warned the visually shaken ‘newbies’ about the broad range of unseen dangers humans encounter in the world. I didn’t really care though. I was too busy rocking back and forth in a traumatized catatonic shock; to be embarrassed in the moment. He prescribed a round of antibiotics and said I would be discharged soon.
His warm smile and demeanor were reassuring. A highly-needed wave of calm temporarily enveloped me after successfully having the stowaway removed. I felt an immense sense of relief but it was short-lived. Outside in the hallway, I overheard him tell his young protégés something which will haunt me to the end of my days.
With a blasé tone which comes from many years of being professionally detached from patients, he explained to them that it was still possible I could have a separate infestation of its embedded offspring! An egg sac could survive the flushing process, or its detached body parts could’ve washed deeper into my inner ear and rot there! The terrible, unrelenting sensation of being invaded from within returned with a vengeance and I fear it will never leave. I feel THEM crawling within me!