‘I used to be left blind in a single eye after silly mistake’ | EUROtoday

A healthcare employee misplaced imaginative and prescient in a single eye after repeatedly sporting her every day contact lenses for fortnight-long stretches. Mother-of-four Katie Carrington, 36, started utilizing every day disposable lenses aged 17 and developed poor habits of maintaining them in following evenings out.

The nurse, from Romford, Essex, allowed her practices to deteriorate additional – finally sporting an identical lenses for weeks consecutively, earlier than being admitted to hospital with “unbearable” ocular ache in August 2025. She skilled full imaginative and prescient loss in her proper eye, with medical professionals unsure about potential restoration.

Medical workers decided the blindness resulted from bacterial contamination trapped beneath the contact lenses, triggering an an infection. Fortunately, her imaginative and prescient progressively recovered and inside 5 weeks her eyesight returned to regular ranges.

Katie now advocates for higher consciousness relating to the hazards of extended contact lens put on.

She defined: “I was really stupid – I misused my contact lenses. At first, I would go to parties and not take them out at night, but then I started wearing them for excessive amounts of time.”

“I’d be terrible sometimes and wear them for a week or two at a time, I’d wait until my eyes were really dry and then take them out and change them. I did it out of convenience. My eyesight is pretty bad, so I just hated the fact that I’d wake up and couldn’t see.

“Looking again now, I do not know why I did it. One night time in August 2025, I used to be mendacity in mattress and my eyes had been pounding and streaming.

“The next morning, I woke up in unbearable pain – it was worse than giving birth. I couldn’t see at all in my right eye. Doctors didn’t know if my sight would come back.

“I used to be so depressed, pondering I would not get to see my youngsters rising up. Even although it was only one eye, I felt like all my independence had been taken away from me.

“Daily tasks became so hard. When I was making a bottle for my baby I would spill it everywhere and I had to focus so hard to cut things up in the kitchen.

“Thank the Lord I can see once more, however I’ll by no means put on contacts once more. It was my fault and I take full accountability, however I did not know the dangers related to them.

“I urge contact lens wearers to read up about the risks. I thought it would never happen to me, because I got away with it for so long, but now I’m focused on looking after myself.”

Katie was suggested she required spectacles at 16, however despising her look while sporting them, she switched to contact lenses a yr later. She purchased every day disposable lenses by means of on-line retailers.

Periodically, Katie would misplace a contact lens behind her eye and would retrieve it manually utilizing her fingers. One night in August 2025, while Katie lay in mattress, her eyes started throbbing intensely as tears streamed down her face.

Katie initially dismissed the discomfort, eradicating her lenses earlier than trying to sleep. However, her eyes streamed repeatedly in a single day, and she or he awoke experiencing “unbearable” agony, which she likened to being worse than childbirth.

Unable to open her proper eye in any way and feeling as if she was being “stabbed in the eye”, she wrapped a shawl round her head whereas her husband rushed her to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. Medical workers scraped her eyeballs to check for microorganisms that may have precipitated the imaginative and prescient loss, an expertise she described as “traumatic”.

Clinicians defined that microscopic micro organism might have entered her contact lenses, triggering an an infection which resulted in blindness. Katie was required to put on an eyepatch and was knowledgeable it remained unsure whether or not her imaginative and prescient would return.

Throughout 48 hours, she administered eye drops hourly, together with by means of the night time, and attended weekly appointments at Moorfields to observe any enchancment. She took 4 weeks’ go away from work to recuperate, throughout which she felt “depressed”, as shedding her sight had robbed her of her independence.

She contemplated resigning from her place, as she could not see effectively sufficient to drive there, and commenced worrying about adapting to life with partial sight. Everyday actions grew to become terribly difficult, and she or he would blame herself when spilling issues on the ground, as she could not see what she was doing.

Following a five-week interval, Katie was relieved when her imaginative and prescient returned to regular. Medical professionals have knowledgeable her that sporting contact lenses stays an choice, although she insists it is “not worth it”.

“If one person learns from this that you shouldn’t leave contact lenses in, then I feel like I’ve made a difference”, she mentioned.