Are you 100 percent sure you’re only wearing one pair of contacts on your eyeballs right now? How can you be certain? Maybe you should go check it out real quick, just in case?
In today’s nightmare news, a British eye surgeon discovered 27 missing contact lenses lodged in the eye socket of a patient who came in for cataract surgery. Needless to say, the surgery was rescheduled.
Opthalmologist Rupal Morjaria told Optometry Today she initially found 17 contact lenses, which were all stuck together and appeared as a “bluish mass.” An additional ten were identified upon further examination.
The 67-year-old patient had no idea they were in there. She told her doctors she had been experiencing discomfort, but had attributed it to old age and dry eye.
Morjaria said the operating team was also shocked, having never seen anything like this before. They were also perplexed that the woman could retain such a buildup of lenses without displaying symptoms, beyond mild discomfort.
“We were really surprised that the patient didn’t notice it because it would cause quite a lot of irritation while it was sitting there,” Morjaria explained.
Morjaria said two weeks after the lenses were removed, the woman came in for a return appointment and said that her eyes felt much better. Uh, sure would hope so!
While the incident happened back in November 2016, Morjaria explained that the case was so bizarre, the team decided to publish it this month in the British Medical Journal.
The woman had been wearing monthly disposable contact lenses for 35 years, but she had been lax about showing up for routine eye appointments. So ostensibly, the extra contacts could have been inhabiting her eye for more than three decades? How does this even happen?
Folks, if you learn anything from this story, don’t skip out on your appointments.
Honestly, my eye hurts right now. Maybe I’m finally ready to get Lasik?
