Florida man has 150 live bugs removed from his nose — and he didn’t even know they were there

It took a few months, but a Florida man finally found out what was bugging him.

Jacksonville doctors removed 150 live bugs in the larva stage from the nose and sinuses of a cancer survivor earlier this month, First Coast News reports.

The unidentified man had been feeling “off” since October, but it wasn’t until his face and lips swelled on Feb. 9 that he sought help at HCA Florida Memorial Hospital.

“I started getting nose bleeds, constant nose bleeds,” the man told First Coast News. “I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom without my nose starting to bleed.”

Things got really weird at the hospital.

“When I went for the examination the doctor says, ‘I see movement,’” the man recalled.

Dr. David Carlson told the outlet that he examined the man’s nose with a camera — only to discover dozens of bugs feeding on the inside of the nose and sinus cavity and shedding tissue and excrement, which is what spurred the man’s inflammation.

“Size-wise, there’s variations, but the larger ones were as big as the end of my pinky,” Carlson said about the disgusting pests. “There were certain larvae inside the nose that were scurrying around and looking for places to feed and others that had burrowed into tissue.”

Carlson said his team tried to remove the bugs with a suction, but when that got clogged, they used different instruments to pluck them out. And those little buggers didn’t want to get evicted, Carlson noted.

First Coast News shared graphic footage from the operating room that shows the gruesome bugs crawling inside the man’s face and their stomach-churning extraction.

“They were right up against his skull base, right under the brain, had they gone through that it could have killed him,” Carlson explained.

The creepy crawlies were sent to an epidemiologist for identification. 

The man hypothesized that the parasites staged their invasion after he handled dead fish.

“I know that I have to change my lifestyle as far as I handle fish,” he told First Coast News. “Before, I would rinse my hands in the river, now I’ll use cleaner to do a better job and not touch my nose or my hand.”

Carlson said that in his lengthy career as an ears, nose and throat specialist he had not seen a case like this documented in the US.

The rare condition is called nasal myiasis, which is the infestation of fly larvae.

A 2021 case study of a 54-year-old female farmer from a rural area with the illness reported that open wounds, lesions, scabs, an immunocompromised state, diabetes, nutritional deficiencies and poor hygiene are among the risk factors.

The Florida patient had a cancerous tumor removed from his nose 30 years ago.

That meant he had open spaces in his nasal cavity and a weakened immune system. He was given a special antiparasitic rinse for his nose — now he’s expected to make a full recovery. 

“The intent is not to create hysteria with viewers, but anyone who has an immune system that’s compromised or less than optimal could be at risk for abnormal infections,” Carlson told First Coast News. “If you’re going to be around a dirty environment, those hands need to be washed.”