Woman Finds Missing Contact Lens In Her Eye, 28 Years Later!
A woman in the United Kingdom recently found her lost contact lens inside her eye a shocking 28 years later.
According to a CBS News report, when the woman was 14, she suffered a shot to her eye during a game of badminton. As a result of the hit, she ended up losing her contact lens, and never found it. However, a recent cyst removal from her eyelid revealed a shocking discovery — her missing contact lens.
The 42-year-old woman didn’t realize the lens remained in her eye for 28 years. After dealing with a swollen and drooping eyelid for about six months, she visited a specialist to get to the root of the problem. The ophthalmologist could feel a lump under her skin and ordered an MRI of the area. The details from the testing revealed a cyst that measured 0.31 by 0.16 by 0.24 inches right over her left eye.
After surgeons removed the cyst, they conducted further testing. When the sliced the object open, they made a shocking discovery. A hard but fragile contact lens, which the cyst had formed around. It was a rigid gas-permeable, which was the type she wore at age 14.
While the woman did not remember the incident that caused her to lose her lense, her mother recounted the errant badminton shuttlecock incident. After she lost the contact lens at the age of 14, the woman never wore the rigid type of lenses again, according to a CNN report. She did, however, report that her eyelid had been droopy for years, but it never seemed to be a significant issue.
A contact lens was embedded in a woman's eyelid for 28 years https://t.co/CqrJDuhOvy pic.twitter.com/jB4SYAOAxl
— CNN (@CNN) August 15, 2018
In their report, the woman’s doctors said that they could “infer that the [contact] lens migrated into the patient’s left upper eyelid at the time of trauma and [remained there] for the last 28 years.” However, they weren’t clear on what exactly caused the recent swelling that led to the discovery of the cyst. The felt surprised that the lost contact hadn’t created an issue earlier.
One reason the woman may not have noticed the missing contact in her eye is that she never experienced the typical symptoms of a trapped contact, which include sharp, scratchy pain along with possible light sensitivity, and redness.
Strangely enough, just last year, doctors also found and removed 27 soft contact lenses from a different British woman’s eye. It’s difficult to imagine losing and never noticing that many lenses just as it’s hard to imagine living with one embedded for 28 long years.
Doctors advise patients to always inform them of any instances of past eye trauma to help avoid these types of situations.
