It was first day as a fully vested physician when her last patient walked in with nothing worse than an earache.
To her great surprise – and that of horrified Thais spreading her story this week like it was dengue virus – Varanya discovered an entire gecko had crawled into the patient’s ear and camped there for two days.
The full removal of the reptile was confirmed only Tuesday, but the bizarre case began blowing up online soon after the young physician took her terrifying tale online.
“This was my last case of the day…. I am so confused. How did a huge gecko crawl into a tiny ear hole?” 25-year-old Varanya wrote in a post laced with medical jargon along with a photo of the reptilian trespass-ear.
Though Varanya could not be reached for comment as of late Wednesday afternoon, she explained online that the patient, who was not identified, had come in complaining about the ear pain. When she peered inside with her otoscope, Varanya didn’t expect to see something wiggling around inside.
So she put anesthetic drops inside the ear and asked the patient to tilt their head while a nurse removed the squirming creature with tweezers. That was when the medical team fully realized what had been stuck inside for the two days.
“It wasn’t just a small bug, it was a gecko! It was still alive and moving,” she wrote. How the creature managed to survive so long inside an ear still baffles the young doctor.
Varanya was still worried they hadn’t gotten all the gecko bits out, so she took the patient to a specialist Tuesday to make sure no lizard parts remained stuck inside.
“The doctor confirmed that the ear had been cleared and that no gecko tail remains. I’m very happy! The doctor complimented me for doing a good job. … I could cry,” said the newly graduated doctor wrote..
Adding even more weirdness was the fact it was the freshly graduated Varanya’s first day on the job as an outpatient doctor. What a welcome, huh?
Update: An earlier version of this story had embedded Varanya Nganthavee’s original post. Since it has since been deleted, we have replaced it with a screenshot of her post.
