Last year, my husband and I purchased our first house. Lucky for us new homeowners, the house needed minimal work. Any fixer-upping was mostly stuff we wanted to do, rather than repairs that were absolute necessities.

But one annoying, consistent downside of our new home was the presence of cockroaches—otherwise known as palmetto bugs down here—thanks to the Florida climate.

Anyone who has lived in a humid location is probably well-acquainted with these flying, horrifying monsters. I learned that they tend to take shelter in homes in hot or wet weather, although they can show up out of nowhere. Well, roaches kept making appearances in our home, so I finally called a local exterminator.

A few weeks ago, he walked around and sprayed the outside of the house as well as the baseboards in every room in the interior. My husband and I felt good about this. We decided to spend $85 every three months for what we felt was important for our peace of mind. Unfortunately, our sense of relief that we wouldn't find any more roaches was a little premature.

Last month, in the middle of the night, I woke up startled. It felt like someone had placed a chip of ice in my left earhole—but it was something way worse.

I shot up out of bed, disoriented, and stumbled to the bathroom. I could feel that my ear was not right. I grabbed a cotton swab and gently inserted it into my ear to see what was up and I felt something move.

When I pulled the cotton swab out, there were two dark brown, skinny pieces stuck to the tip. Moments later, I came to the realization that they were legs. LEGS. Legs that could only belong to an adventurous palmetto bug exploring my ear canal.

I started to hyperventilate, and my husband searched furiously for his glasses and joined me in the bathroom. He looked into my ear and confirmed that there was a roach trying to burrow its way to my brain. (OK, I know the ear canal isn’t a hop, skip, and a jump away from the brain, but that’s immediately where my mind went.)

In that moment, my husband was my only hope. He grabbed a pair of tweezers, located the thickest part of the roach that was visible (I KNOW) and tried to very delicately extract it. (For what it’s worth, my husband is a professional percussionist, and all of his hand movements are very precise.)

Unfortunately, he only managed to pull two of its spiky legs off. At that point, it was clear I needed to go to the ER.

While my husband made a frazzled attempt to locate clothing, his wallet, and keys, I managed to put on a bra and yoga pants, pull my hair into a messy bun, and corral our dog into the gated area in our kitchen where she can roam freely when we are out of the house—all while having a MOVING ROACH IN MY EAR.

Women can get shit done, let me tell you.

As I walked to the car, I could feel the roach trying to wiggle deeper into my ear canal. It was an awful feeling, one that was not necessarily painful, but psychologically torturous. Think of that humming sound you hear when you plug your ears and press really hard—that’s what I heard and felt, on the left side of my head as the roach tried to crawl. It was bizarre.

Thankfully, the hospital is only about two miles from where we live, and there were few cars on the road at 2 A.M., so we got there pretty fast. He dropped me at the entrance and went to park the car.