Doctors find venomous brown recluse spider inside Missouri woman's ear

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Friday, August 23, 2019
Doctors find venomous brown recluse spider inside woman's ear
Doctors find venomous brown recluse spider inside Kansas City, Missouri woman's ear

KANSAS CITY, Missouri -- It's the stuff nightmares are made of - imagine waking up to find a poisonous spider in your ear.

That's what happened to one woman in Kansas City, Missouri.

"I woke up Tuesday morning hearing a bunch of swooshing and water in my left ear," Susie Torres told KSHB-TV.

So Torres went to a clinic in the Northland where a medical assistant first checked her out.

"Ran out and said 'I'm going to go get a couple more people' and said' I think you have an insect in there' I didn't panic because I did not know exactly what is was until she came back in and told me it was a spider. They had a few tools and worked their magic and got it out," said Torres.

Once it was out, Torres surprisingly had a few questions about her eight-legged guest.

"Just why, where, what and how? I never thought that they would crawl in your ear or any part of your body," she said.

That's when doctors told Torres it was a brown recluse - a venomous spider.

"She said she looked and I looked ok and that I was lucky that I didn't get bitten by this recluse," said Torres.

Now, Torres says she is taking some extra precautions when she goes to bed at night.

"I went and put some cotton balls in my ear last night because I did not have any ear plugs, I'm pretty terrified of the spiders," she said.

Bites from brown recluse spiders can result in fever, chills, increased sweating, nausea and headaches.