Man Loses Eye After A Contact Lens Parasite Entered His Eye

A man has been left blind in one eye after a parasite from a rare infection triggered by his contact lenses burrowed into his eyeball.
Retired engineer Stephen Souter, 63, suffered "indescribable" pain as the disease slowly destroyed his cornea.

He was diagnosed with Acanthamoeba Keratitis, an infection caused by a microscopic organism found in water in our homes and outdoors.
Most varieties of the organism are harmless but some can cause a serious eye disease if they infect the cornea.
The vast majority of victims - some 85 per cent - are people who wear contact lenses where poor lens hygiene increases the risk.

Stephen, who had been using daily disposable contact lenses for three years, went to his GP in January when a redness developed in his left eye and the pain kept him awake all night.
He went to his GP the following day who referred him to an eye clinic, thinking it was glaucoma as his father had suffered from the disease.

At first he was given eye drops to but the condition worsened and the sight in his left eye disappeared completely in the summer.
Stephen, from Braunton, Devon, faces another year of partial sight and treatment with drops to kill off the infection before he is eligible for a cornea transplant.
He said: "I get depressed with it. It drags you down because I'm on morphine as well which is a painkiller so all in all, it’s affected my whole life because I have not got sight in one eye.
"I can drive but only in the night and I don't drive long distances - my wife drives me. I only drive round the village.
"I can work but it has an influence on my work and what I do. Overall, it’s had a massive effect on my life, I'm just hoping to see the end of it.”
Around 1 in 50,000 contact lens wearers in the UK are affected each year by the condition but only a minority of them lose their sight.



Stephen said he cannot pinpoint a particular moment when he might have picked up the infection.

He said: "I hadn't been abroad or done anything out of the ordinary. I can't think of anything which might have caused it.
"I just suddenly had this pain in my eye. I thought it was a normal infection so I stopped using them, but obviously it wasn't.
"Apparently you can pick this bug up from any water. There is a two million to one chance, and I was the unlucky one."

Wife Tess, 61, said: "It has been a never-ending, living nightmare, which came totally out of the blue.
"Now he has no confidence - I drive us everywhere. We are happy with each other's company but it's turned our life upside down."


Source: The Mirror