Spider Found Living in Woman's Ear for 5 Days

Thanks to @beubank for alerting me to this story about a spider who lived in a woman's ear for 5 days before being removed. As an aside, in typical media blunder of factual error, in the Huffington Post, a picture is shown of the spider stating an "x-ray photo"... COME ON!!! The picture is NOT an x-ray in any way shape and form!!! It's just a regular ordinary picture one takes with a camera.

On that note, August 9, 2012 must be the time for all media to report on all sorts of things found in people's ears and noses.

Fox News reported on a story about a lego being stuck inside a kid's nose for 3 years.

In the past year, I must have removed several cockroaches, ticks, rocks, pebbles, play-doe, paper, cotton, and even one moth. Never a spider however.

In perhaps one of the most impressive arrays of foreign objects removed from the ear, nose and throat (I believe in the thousands) is on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. All objects were removed by a single ENT (Dr. Chevalier Jackson). If you are ever in Philadelphia, this museum is a must see.

Posterior Tongue Tie

An ordinary garden-variety tongue tie (also known as ankyloglossia) is a rare condition whereby the tongue is anchored to the floor of the mouth preventing the tongue tip from moving freely.

Patients with tongue tie have greater difficulty with:

• feeding if infant
• speech if school-age child
• french kissing if young adult

Treatment is tongue tie release which can be done at any time if difficulties arise. In infants and young adults, this procedure can be done in the office under local anesthesia only. In school age kids, it typically requires sedation given lack of cooperation with keeping the mouth open and tongue still.

Posterior Tongue Tie

Though tongue tie is rare, there is an even more rare subtype called submucus tongue tie or posterior tongue tie.

This condition is when the tongue tie is hidden UNDER the mucus lining of the tongue/mouth. You can't see this type of tongue tie, but you can feel it if you run the finger underneath the tongue from side to side where the tongue tie would be. One would feel a tissue band (speed-bump sensation with finger sweep) where the tongue tie would be.

Treatment is a bit more complicated than a regular tongue tie release in that the mucus lining has to be incised in order to expose the tongue tie prior to release. Once the tongue tie is released, the incision is sutured closed.

Given the more complicated steps to address this rare condition, it does need to be performed under sedation.

Earworms (The Song That Is Stuck In Your Head)

An earworm is when there is a tune that gets stuck in your head that lasts for minutes to hours. It wasn't really much interest for scientists to study until recently when they were able to determine the "characteristics" of a good earworm. In a study published in the British Journal of Psychology in November 2009 titled "Earworms ('stuck song syndrome'): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts", they found that the best earworms are:

- Repetitive songs with lots of la-la-las and doopity-doopity-dahs.
- Very familiar songs and it’s usually the chorus that gets stuck.
- Simple songs with sappy lyrics
- Happen when people are in a positive emotional state
- Person usually participating in non-intellectual activities, like walking
- Musicians’ earworm usually lasts longer

No good tricks to get rid of an earworm unfortunately, though there's lots of anecdotal suggestions.

Read about this in an MSNBC article here.

There was also an NPR Radiolab episode about this here.

Read the research paper here.

Please comment on your best trick to get rid of an earworm!