In May 2019, Emily Kelleher, a high school English teacher in Massachusetts, woke up in excruciating pain.
Her left eye felt like it was being stabbed by a ‘knife or an ice pick’ and was blood red. She put on her glasses, but still couldn’t see out of the affected eye.
She went to the doctor, who saw flecks of white, cloudy material all over her eye. Eventually, they diagnosed Ms Kelleher with a rare parasitic infection, called acanthamoeba keratitis.
Her doctors told her she likely got it when the parasites got into her eye while showering with contacts, something she used to do every day.
‘Tell your friends. Learn from me, because I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,’ Ms Kelleher said.
About 45 million people in the United States wear contact lenses.
Though they may seem like an every day accessories, the CDC notes that contacts are medical devices, and using them improperly can lead to infection, scarring and blindness.
In rare cases like Ms Kelleher they can cause painful parasitic infections.
These bugs live in water, and can get into the eye through microscopic tears in the cornea. They burrow this clear outer layer of her eyeball and breed, multiplying and eating the healthy tissue there.
An estimated 1,500 Americans get it each year, according to The Cleveland Clinic. Roughly 90 percent of those cases occur in people who wear contact lenses.
As such, eye doctors recommend against showering, swimming or using a hot tub with your lenses in.
Ms Kelleher’s eye under the microscope (pictured here) in her doctors office revealed the presence of acanthamoeba parasites
Ms Kelleher said there were hundreds of the microscopic parasite in her eye.
She had to have her eye scraped with a scalpel to try to remove as many of the parasites as possible, and was blind for three days after.
For three months following, 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, Ms Kelleher has healed completely, though now she wears glasses exclusively.
What’s more common than acanthamoeba keratitis are problems related using non-sterile contacts or to buying contacts online that don’t fit.
Azula Cinta, a lifestyle creator from Singapore, purchased contacts a TikTok shop in May of 2024.
In a video with over 16 million views, Ms Cinta shared that she had been wearing contacts for 11 years, and had never before had any issues with her prescription lenses.
Despite wearing these new contacts for less than eight hours, Ms Cinta noticed her eyes becoming extremely red, swollen and painful. She went to an optometrist to get examined.
There, her doctor told her that she had developed an infection from the contacts, and sent her home with antibiotic eye drops.
‘Please do not buy contact lenses from Tiktok shop’ she said.
Buying contact lenses from an online retailer without guidance from a doctor puts you at risk of purchasing contacts that don’t fit your eye correctly, Dr Rupda Wong, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told ELLE.
‘If you are wearing a contact lens that’s not fit properly to the surface of your eye, it can cause a lot of complications,’ Dr Wong said.
Wearing improper fitting contacts can block the flow of oxygen and water your eyes need to stay healthy, irritate the eyes and cause tiny tears in the eyes surface.
If the lens is too tight, it can cause the eye to swell, making for painful and blurry vision.
‘Best case scenario, the lens might be a little bit uncomfortable. It can cause dryness or irritation on the front surface of the eyes,’ Dr Brieann Adair, an optometrist from NYU Langone Eye Center, said.
Other times, irritation from a lens that’s too small could cause bacterial infections, leading to scarring which makes vision worse.
Ms Cinta stated that living through this experience made her unlikely to purchase contacts online again.
‘Moving forward, i will only be buying lenses from a licensed optometrist shop to prevent this to ever happen again and i hope you guys would take my advice as well,’ she said.
