The 23-year-old said she was in the ‘worst pain she’d ever felt’.
Why contacts though? Are they making the tears in the cornea to let in the parasites?
Curious if I’d be at risk for taking off my glasses and going for a swim
So I guess the thinking is that things get trapped under the contact lenses. When you blink or pour water over your eyes, you would normally flush nastiness away from your eyes. With the lenses on, it blocks the flushing action, which gives the parasite more time to establish itself.
I suppose this is probably also true for most bacteria or foreign particles too. I imagine it’s also one of the risks of just wearing contacts for too long without changing them.
I think your guess is much more plausible. Because I understand that the trapped bacteria is a risk to the eyes, as well as a lack of oxygen, when sleeping with lenses.
That also happened to the avant-pop musician Momus (in Greece, some time in the 90s). It was featured in a BBC documentary, IIRC.
I have no idea how something like that didn’t happen to me.
I used to wear 30-day disposable contacts for like 3-4 months without ever taking them out. Would just squeeze the cleaning solution directly into my eyes every morning, give them a few heavy blinks, and then rinse with the saline.
Jesus Christmas. Do you hate yourself?
I had a mate back in uni who would pour lager from a pint glass straight into his eyes if his daily contacts started to dry up. Somehow nothing bad ever came of it, I have no idea how. Inexplicable behaviour and zero repercussions.
I wasn’t expecting that, that is literally insane.
Looking back, definitely lol.
At the time I was a lazy teenager / college student and just didn’t really think about it. I was also poor + without insurance so had to make them last. Usually when one would tear, it would be when I was taking them out / putting them in.
Did the contacts really make a difference here or is swimming in affected waters the main hazard?
My understanding is that acanthamoeba are basically everywhere, and the contacts being worn when swimming or showering are actually one of the main factors in acanthamoeba infection. They normally ear bacteria but they are opportunistic parasites, and I guess the contact gives them the opportunity.
So does the scanthamoeba get stuck behind the contact and can’t get washed away by tears? Or do the contacts cause small abrasions that serve as an entry point? What role is the contact lens playing?
I’m only a student in the field so NotADoctor™ but under normal conditions your tear film layer and blinking keep other liquids out of your eyes. When wearing contacts in water or when cleaning them with tapwater, there is a small amount of the fluid that gets trapped against the eye. If that fluid is fresh water contaminated with acanthamoeba, it provides ample opportunity and time for the acanthamoeba to break through the layer and the contact lens prevents it from being blinked away.
Probably didn’t help, but yea…infected water and getting it in your eyes and not rinsing them properly really doesn’t help.
The metro is a rag, not a newspaper
You can wipe your ass with both.
I like how they showed the same picture twice to make sure we saw more of her body
Reasons I’m too squeamish for contacts #407
Just the idea of touching my eye with my finger… I realize there’s a contact lens between them, but that doesn’t really change the ickiness of the idea to me.
You eventually get used to it
One time I tried for 5 minutes to get my contact lens out, getting desperate enough to scratch from the white to the iris with my fingernail. I thought I was scratching the contact lens until I felt something weird in the side of my eye.
The fucking thing slid behind my eye at some point.
So I scratched my literal fucking eyeball with very little pain.
My vision was blurry, but I could see only one contact lens was removed in the container. I concluded that it must still be in there and that the bad vision was just my mind playing tricks on me.
Point is, you can get pretty comfortable touching your eyeball.
I don’t think I want to get used to it.
Me too. And to be honest, the simple idea of a contact constantly sitting on my eyeball makes me squirm.
The idea that the contact lens can get on the side or backside of the eyeball squicks me out.
Contact wearer of 20 years here. It can’t get behind the eye, that part’s a myth; there’s connective tissue surrounding the entire eyeball along the backside, so nothing’s getting through there without tearing through, and it’ll take more than a contact lens to do that.
It can get stuck along the sides, though, but usually only if it’s folded or creased somehow when you put it in. It’s not painful, necessarily, but it is a very uncomfortable feeling; it almost feels like choking, but through your eyeballs. It triggers a gag reflex for me. But you can usually fix it by closing your eyes and gently rolling your eyes around a bit.
It’s pretty much impossible for a lens to get stuck or “lost” in the eye. If it’s in your eye but not in the right spot, you’ll know it.
Yep, I’ve worn contacts since I was three years old. In my nearly 40 years of wearing them, it’s happened maybe five times that they slid to the side. There’s no reason to freak out when it happens; I usually just close my eye and gently nudge the lens back with my finger on my eyelid.
Of course, it helps to know that it can’t physically get ‘behind your eye’ even though it certainly feels that way.
The worst thing I’ve encountered with contacts is when they tear in half in your eye and you remove one part but struggle to find and remove the other half. That’s happened to me a few times.
I’m also a contact wearer and had to explain this to my friend since he was thinking of getting contacts. He saw this video and decided against them. Lol
https://nypost.com/2022/10/14/video-shows-doctor-removing-23-contacts-from-womans-eye/
Thank you for this new fear.
Thank you for this new fear.
It gets better!
In around 40% of cases doctors have to perform surgery, which involves scraping the outside of the eye to remove the parasites and repairing the area through transplant.
Now I’ve had quite a few unpleasant procedures in my time, but that sounds like something I would really love to be knocked out for.
But because it’s eyes, idk if they need the patient conscious. Ugh…
Wear goggles when you go swimming.
Beach trip where? Pls specify so i can dodge that place. And could this parasite not infect the eye without contact lenses aswell?
i think the implication is that the contacts kept the parasite in contact with the cornea giving them time to work into the cornea through small tears, which often occur with people who wear contacts.
I guess that makes sense. Poor woman.
