Contact Lens Horror Stories That'll Seriously Freak You Out
Roughly 71 million people around the entire world wear contacts. That's a lot of daily frustration brought on by tiny little discs that you jam in your eyes in order to see.
Contact lenses come in various forms: soft, hard, vision correcting. You can buy cheap contact lenses online or pay a ton of money for the best of the best. But it seems the annoyances are the same in every form. They're dry, sometimes dirty, easy to drop, easy to tear, and very easy to hate. But we torture ourselves regardless because who would ever actually want to deal with the alternative: wearing glasses?! Or even scarier: lasers!!
Our list of contact lens horror stories covers some of the worst places you can drop your contacts, as well as some of the worst things that can happen if you don't clean your lenses carefully. Seriously, clean your lenses regularly and often! Three words: eye-eating-amoeba. Also, it's probably not a good idea to buy those cheap Halloween contact lenses to finish off your costume. Your color contacts might look great, but chances are that won't end very well.
So lean in and take a closer look at our contact lens horror stories! Whether you're all about discount contact lenses or are still scared of your contact lens solution, these stories will terrify you and gross you out. But don’t strain your eyes! We don't want to cause you any more contact lens pain.
- 1537 VOTES
Contact Lens Fungus Bursts Eye
After wearing disposable contacts for just a day, Jacqueline Stone's vision became blurred.Her eye doctor gave her eye drops to treat the pain, but two days later she was still in pain. A blister then formed and covered her eye. It eventually burst and in the process split her eye. A month later she was diagnosed with a fungal eye infection caused by the Fusarium fungus. Her eye had to be removed.
(Source) - 2313 VOTES
Halloween Lens Rips Out Cornea
A teenager was left partially blind in 2015 after wearing Halloween contacts as part of her costume. Seventeen-year-old Leah Carpenter wore creepy zombie contacts to complete her scary look, but woke up the next morning with a red, swollen eye. After visiting the doctor, she found out that the contacts had ripped off the top layer of her cornea. Thanks to the ordeal, the high school senior missed homecoming and a ton of school, and may never get her vision back to where it was. - 3410 VOTES
Doctors Find 27 Lenses In A Woman's Eye
When a 67-year-old woman came to the doctor for cataract surgery, she assumed the pain in her right eye stemmed from the cataract. Imagine her surprise, and those of her doctors, when they discovered a mass of disposable contact lenses in her eye. Doctors pulled a clump of 17 from beneath her eyelid and an additional 10 around her eye. The woman, who had been using contacts for 35 years without receiving regular eye exams, thought most of the lenses she "lost" simply fell out of her eye, not further into it.
- 4471 VOTES
Terrifying Amoeba Eats Girl's Eyes
After keeping disposable contact lenses in her eyes for six months a student in Taiwan lost her vision. The reason? A single-cell amoeba literally ate her eyes! ATE her eyes! During that six-month period she never removed the lenses to clean them. The bug went to town in the environmental condition that existed between her eyes and her dirty lenses.
(Source) - 5219 VOTES
A Cyst Formed Around A Contact Left In A Woman's Eye For 28 Years
A woman went to the eye doctor after experiencing pain and swelling with her left eyelid. Her optometrist concluded that she had a cyst in her eye and scheduled a removal operation. When the doctors took out the cyst, they discovered it was wrapped around a rigid gas-permeable contact lens. The woman had no idea how the contact got in there, as hadn't used these types of lenses in years. Her mother, however, recalled an incident back from when the patient was 14 years old that was the likely culprit. Nearly 28 years prior, the woman lost a contact in her eye during a badminton tournament. A shuttlecock hit her eye, and she assumed the contact flew out, given that she didn't have any complications with the injury.
- 6322 VOTES
Swimming with Contacts Ends in Blindness
Jennie Hurst knew that she had to practice good hygiene practices with her contact lenses. The one thing she didn’t know? That you shouldn't swim with them. After doing just a few laps in a hotel pool while wearing her lenses, Hurst started experiencing extreme sensitivity to light and pain so bad she had to go to the hospital. The problem turned out to be acanthamoeba keratitis, which is caused by an amoeba found in almost all soil, fresh water, and sea water. Hurst has undergone numerous operations and still has not regained complete ability to see.
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