A woman claims she was left blind in one eye after rinsing her contact lens in tap water and giving her a parasitic infection that is eating away at her cornea.
Kyra Smith, a woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said that her left eye went completely blind after the tap water she used to clean her contact lens left her with an infection called acanthamoeba keratitis, which halted her eyesight.
For six years, the 25-year-old had been an avid user of contact lenses, and it was not out of the ordinary for her to reuse old lenses and wash them in the contact solution each night, but something went terribly wrong this time.
Smith said on a fateful day, she had put her contacts in to go to work but noticed that there was a different sensation this time around.
“I had put my contacts in to go to work and felt a bursting sensation in my left eye but didn’t think too much of it because it wasn’t painful, it was just kind of there,” said Smith.
Smith said that what started out something seemingly not a big deal later became a problem.
“When I got back home, I took out my contact lenses, and my eye was noticeably red, but it wasn’t hurting or anything at that point. The next day I woke up, and my eye was redder, and by that night, it was starting to hurt more, and that’s when I started to become worried,” said Smith.
But doctors believe rinsing the case in tap water introduced harmful bacteria into the lenses, as she contracted the rare infection after six weeks of “back and forth” with eye specialists. The parasite ate away at Smith’s cornea, and she was homebound throughout the painful ordeal.
She even went through a cornea replacement surgery, but it was done ineffectively because the infection still remained. Now, Smith is blind in her eye to this day.
More details of this story from AWM:
Smith, who works in a dental office, is now going through further treatment to get rid of the parasite. When the infection is completely gone, she hopes to have another cornea replacement surgery to hopefully get her vision restored in her damaged eye.
She added, “The next day, I woke up, and my eye was redder, and by that night, it was starting to hurt more, and that’s when I started to become worried.”
“After six weeks of back and forth, they still couldn’t tell me what was wrong with my eye – they told me at one point that it could be herpes and gave me medication, but that wasn’t working. After that, things went downhill – my light sensitivity was getting so bad that I couldn’t be outside or look at my phone, and it would travel to my other eye, so even using my good eye was hurting badly.”
She added, “I started losing my sight in April, and it was very rapid after that – it started as a blur in the corner of my eye and spread, and within two weeks, my sight was completely gone. I went to see a [different] specialist, and he said you have acanthamoeba, and we’re looking at a really bad case because you’ve had it for more than six weeks without any treatment.”
Ultimately, she was left tormented and traumatized.
“I was scared and super emotional because I didn’t know what it meant for me and my vision. It was very difficult to deal with.”
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