Mom Wakes Up Blind After A Parasitic Worm Got Stuck Behind Her Contact Lens.
Suzanne Dunne, a mother-of-two, has issued a warning to contact lens wearers because She spent two weeks in the hospital with bleach being poured into her eye each day after a parasitic worm crept under her contact lens and ate her cornea.
Ms. Dunne said her eye became gradually worse and more irritable and By the evening, she was in severe pain and suffering from an eye infection.
Recalling the trouble, she said she woke up in the middle of the night in agony. Her husband Paul, a taxi driver, had just come home and rang an ambulance.
‘My sight was gone, completely gone. The whole place was black. My eye was being pushed out by the parasite. And I was so upset because the kids Mia, 5, and Max, 8, had woke up and seen me go off in the ambulance,’ she told Dublin Live.
Suzanne was then sent to the Mater University Hospital in Dublin for 16 days.
While there, she had bleach poured into her eye every day to kill the infection.
She explained: ‘It can only happen to a contact lens wearer because the contact lens creates a vacuum in the eye. So if anything goes in behind it makes it cling on to it.’
Once the parasite gets into the eye it causes Acanthamoeba keratitis, which can cause inflammation of the cornea.
She added: ‘In the winter time you’re safe. In warm conditions and because we haven’t had heat like this the parasite multiplies and it’s rampant. Even though the parasite is dead the damage is done.’
The mother and runner hope to complete the Dublin marathon later this year.