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A 42-year-old Indian woman from Chennai was distressed when doctors found out that a cockroach literally made a home inside her head. It started when she felt an intense crawling sensation in her right nostril just behind her eyes on Tuesday night.

Selvi was a domestic worker, she assumed at first that she would just be catching a cold. She was rushed to the closest local clinic by her son-in-law where medics flushed her nose and after that she was sent home.

According to Independent she was referred to a second hospital where doctors suspected she might be suffering from a nasal growth. The sensation did not subside until she came to the third hospital where a doctor recommended a scan. Finally the fourth hospital she visited had a specialist that explored her nasal passages with an endoscope.

On Wednesday an Ear, nose and throat specialist MN Shankar at Chennai's Stanley Medical College Hospital said he saw some tiny legs moving inside. The invasive roach had burrowed deep insider her nose, almost to the base of her skull. It was still alive after roughly 12 hours and didn't seem to want to come out.

"I looked further in and almost five centimeters from the tip of the nose I saw something unusual. I realized I was actually looking at the bottom of a cockroach," said Dr. Shankar.

They first tried a suction device but the insect clung to the tissues. The procedure took 45 minutes using a suction and forceps.

Zee News India reported Dr. Shankar managed to extract the cockroach from her skull. The cockroach was intact, still alive and kicking. In his three decades of medical practice it was the first time Dr. Shankar had seen anything like it.

If the cockroach died and was left inside, the woman would have developed an infection. It would have spread to her brain. The woman was absolutely fine, she just felt embarrassed she had a cockroach up her nose.