A live cockroach was taken out from the base of a woman’s skull close to her brain at Chennai’s Government Stanley Hospital on Wednesday, reported Deccan Chronicle. The doctors, who said they have removed maggots and houseflies from nostrils in the past, were shocked to find a cockroach that had lodged itself between her eyes and her brain and was still alive.

42-year-old Selvi, living at Injambakkam, had visited two clinics before ending up at Stanley on Wednesday morning after she felt extreme discomfort in her nose. She could constantly feel something wriggling in her nose, however, the doctors at the previous two clinics could not figure out what it was.

When she was examined at Stanley with nasal endoscope, the doctors found a live cockroach sitting near the skull base. “It was alive. And it didn’t seem to want to come out,” said Dr MN Shankar, head of ENT department at Stanley told The Times of India.

The doctors used a suction apparatus to remove the insect from its place. The process was difficult as the cockroach was large in size and had placed itself at a spot where it was difficult to be removed from. “We then used nasal endoscopy and another aseptic technique, to drag it to a place from where I could pull it out finally after about 45 minutes,” Dr Shankar told Deccan Chronicle.

If the cockroach had been left there for longer, it would have died and the patient would have developed an infection which could have spread to the brain, Dr Shankar said.