(CBS) –Imagine paying $10,000 a month for skilled nursing home care for your loved one only to have the unthinkable happen.

It was horrific for an Arlington Heights family that is now suing the nursing home.

Ninety-two year old Catherine McCann has severe Alzheimer’s and is unable to speak or care for herself. While she was at Lutheran Home for the Aged in Arlington Heights, it was discovered that her left ear was infested with maggots.

“I was horrified, shocked,” says her husband John McCann, 88. “I thought it was terrible. I’m paying all this money for that kind of care — no way.”

Now, her family is suing the nursing home for emotional distress and negligence.

“In this case, they allowed Catherine McCann to have a fly get into her ear canal, lay eggs and hatch 57 maggots,” says attorney Henry Gruss, who filed the lawsuit

That’s how many maggots Northwest Community Hospital doctors removed from McCann’s ear. Before the surgery, doctors made a videotape to document the infestation.

“One of them was just crawling out of the ear,” Gruss says.

Mary McCann Stassen says she could barely look the photos of her mother’s ear.

“It’s a picture I will never, ever get out of my mind –ever,” she says.

Worse yet, she says, was “hearing her scream as they were taking the maggots out of her ear.”