In May 2019, Emily Kelleher, a high school English teacher in Massachusetts, woke up in excruciating pain.
He felt as if a knife or ice pick had been stuck in his left eye and it was blood red. He put on his glasses but still couldn’t see out of the affected eye.
She went to the doctor, who saw specks of white, cloudy material all over her eye. Ms. Kelleher was eventually diagnosed with a rare parasitic infection called acanthamoeba. keratitis.
Her doctors told her she probably contracted it when parasites got into her eye while she was showering with contact lenses on, something she used to do every day.
“Tell your friends. Learn from me, because I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” Kelleher said.
Approximately 45 million people in the United States wear contact lenses.
Although they may seem like everyday accessories, The CDC notes that Contact lenses are medical devices and improper use can lead to infections, scarring and blindness.
In rare cases, such as Ms Kelleher’s, they can cause painful parasitic infections.
These bugs live in water and can enter the eye through microscopic tears in the cornea. They burrow into this clear outer layer of the eyeball and reproduce, multiplying and devouring the healthy tissue there.
An estimated 1,500 Americans suffer from it each year, according to The Cleveland Clinic. Approximately 90 percent of these cases occur in people who wear contact lenses.
For this reason, ophthalmologists recommend not showering, swimming or using a jacuzzi while wearing contact lenses.
Ms Kelleher’s eye under a microscope (pictured) at her doctor’s office revealed the presence of acanthamoeba parasites.
Ms Kelleher said there were hundreds of microscopic parasites in her eye.
They had to scrape her eye with a scalpel to try to remove as many parasites as possible and she was left blind for three days.
For the next three months, she had to use special eye drops every hour, all day and all night.
Some people lose their eye or vision completely, but after about a year, Kelleher has made a full recovery, although she now only wears glasses.
What is more common than acanthamoeba? Keratitis is a problem associated with wearing unsterile contact lenses or purchasing ill-fitting contact lenses online.
Azula Cinta, a lifestyle creator from Singapore, purchased contacts from a TikTok store in May 2024.
In a video with more than 16 million views, Ms. Cinta shared that she had been wearing contact lenses for 11 years and had never had any issues with her prescription lenses before.
Despite wearing the new lenses for less than eight hours, Ms Cinta noticed that her eyes were red, swollen and extremely painful. She went to an optometrist for an examination.
There, her doctor told her she had developed an infection from her contact lenses and sent her home with antibiotic eye drops.
‘Please do not buy contact lenses from the Tiktok store,’ she said.
Purchasing contact lenses from an online retailer without a doctor’s guidance puts you at risk of purchasing contact lenses that do not fit your eye properly, said Dr. Rupda Wong, a spokesperson for the The American Academy of Ophthalmology told ELLE.
“If you wear a contact lens that doesn’t fit properly on the surface of your eye, it can cause a lot of complications,” Dr. Wong said.
Wearing the wrong contact lenses can block the flow of oxygen and water your eyes need to stay healthy, irritate your eyes, and cause tiny tears to form on the surface of your eyes.
If the lens is too tight, it can cause the eye to swell, resulting in painful and blurred vision.
“At best, contact lenses can be a little uncomfortable. They can cause dryness or irritation on the front surface of your eyes,” said Dr. Brieann Adair, an optometrist at NYU Langone Eye Center.
Other times, irritation caused by a lens that is too small can cause bacterial infections, resulting in scarring that worsens vision.
Ms Cinta said that having gone through this experience made her unlikely to buy contact lenses online again.
“From now on, I will only buy glasses from an authorized optometrist store to prevent this from happening again and I hope you will follow my advice as well.” She said.
