A 27-YEAR-OLD returned from holiday with flesh-eating maggots "writhing" inside her head – a horrifying ordeal that almost paralysed her face.
Rochelle Harris burst into tears when doctors told her the noises in her head were caused by tiny bugs that had chewed a 12mm hole in her ear canal.
Stunned medics at the Royal Derby Hospital raced against time to extract the maggots before they could eat their way through a facial nerve.
Ear, nose and throat specialist Steve Emmett performed surgery that lasted over an hour to get the maggots out.
He said it was a "big shock" when he uncovered the infestation.
"It's extremely rare to find maggots living inside a patient's head," Mr Emmett said. "The extent of it was very usual. When I looked closely using a speculum, I could see a massive wiggling of tiny white critters.
"The stakes were relatively high – where they had drilled their little hole was close to a facial nerve. If that had gone she would have lost control of all the muscles on that side of her face."
Miss Harris's ordeal began when she developed excruciating headaches and face pain on the flight home from a holiday in Peru. She also started hearing noises in her head and the next morning woke to a pillow soaked with fluid from her ear.
Miss Harris, of Swanwick, went to A&E at the Royal Derby Hospital, where medics initially believed she had a minor ear infection.
But closer inspection revealed a New World Army Screw Worm fly had laid eggs in her ear – and that soon led to a family of eight maggots roaming around in her head.
Miss Harris – who was accompanied by her mother at the Royal Derby Hospital – said she was horrified to learn the source of her headaches.
She said: "My mum asked the doctor 'Can you see what it is?' and she said 'If you don't mind I'd prefer to speak to the registrar before I tell you anything'.
"My mum said 'please tell us' and that's when the doctor said 'you've got maggots in your ear'. I burst into tears instantly."
Doctors tried to get the maggots out but the more they delved into her ear, the more the larvae retreated into Miss Harris's head.
Miss Harris said: "I was very scared. I wondered if they were in my brain. I thought to myself 'This could be very, very serious'."
Doctors ordered an emergency brain scan. Luckily, it showed that no damage had been done to Miss Harris's eardrum, blood vessels or facial nerve.
They then tried to drown the maggots by flooding the ear canal with olive oil.
"I had to wait overnight to see if the treatment worked," said Miss Harris. "It was the longest few hours of my life.
"I just wanted them out of me and now I knew what was causing the sensations and sounds it made it all the worse."
Miss Harris was given an MRI scan to see if the maggots had migrated to her brain but luckily they had not got very far. She said the wait for minor surgery to remove the maggots was the longest few hours of her life.
The next day, doctors checked her ear and, astonishingly, the maggots were still alive. They managed to remove two, but were concerned there might be one more left inside her.
Miss Harris was sedated and surgeons explored her ear using a microscope. As they pushed further inside, they found what they described as a "writhing mass of maggots". The two that had been extracted were not alone. Further examination revealed Miss Harris was in fact hosting a family of eight large maggots.
She said she remembered walking through a swarm of flies in Peru and one had got inside her ear. But once she had shooed it away she thought nothing more of it.
Her ordeal features in a new Discovery Channel documentary, called Bugs, Bites and Parasites, that will be aired on Sunday at 10pm.
