The mother-of-three was forced to have her eye sewn shut and quit her job following the incident, which left even doctors shocked by what they discovered
A mother was left with her eye sewn shut and had to give up her job after parasites ‘ate’ through her cornea — all because she washed her face while wearing contact lenses. Emma Marsden had been mucking out horses when she tumbled headfirst into a wheelbarrow filled with dirt and water, leaving her covered in mud on February 28.
The 47-year-old then washed her face and hands to remove the mud, but didn’t remove her contact lenses until later that evening.
Four days later, she noticed her right eye was stinging and visited her GP after experiencing “excruciating” pain, where she was referred to hospital.
When initial tests came back clear, Emma claims doctors concluded it was an ulcer and discharged her with eyedrops.
Over the subsequent days, however, the pain intensified and she lost all vision in the affected eye.
Following an appointment with a hospital consultant on March 7, Emma was diagnosed with acanthamoeba keratitis, a rare eye infection caused by a parasite burrowing into her cornea.
She was also found to be suffering from fusarium keratitis, a severe fungal infection of the cornea, along with corneal ulcers.
Medics told Emma she had contracted the infection by washing her face while still wearing her contact lenses, as the parasite is commonly found in tap water.
As a result, she had her eyelids sewn together after the parasite had “eaten through” her cornea, and was prescribed eye drops to administer every hour.
“My eye was excruciatingly painful and red. When I woke up the next morning, any time light hit my eye the pain was so severe I couldn’t open my eyes,” she recalled.
Shocking photographs reveal how the mum-of-three’s typically blue-green eye has transformed into a cloudy grey due to the parasite.
The Lancashire resident said she was heartbroken by the situation, having been told she may permanently lose sight in her right eye.
Emma added: “It’s pretty heartbreaking to think I might never see out of that eye again.”
Following the perforation of her cornea, surgeons were compelled to stitch her right eyelids shut to aid recovery, and she will ultimately require a cornea transplant in a few years.
She said: “It’s excruciatingly painful and everything just stops, your life stops. I’ve had three kids and giving birth is a dream compared to this pain.
“It eats through your eye and cornea and all your nerves. The speed it ate at the doctors couldn’t believe it,” she continued.
The incident, she added, had left her having to sit in the dark and have “no independence” for three-and-a-half weeks.
But in a bid to remain positive, she said: “You have no choice but to get on with it, you can’t sit there wallowing in self-pity.
“It’s a bad situation but I’m still here. I can walk, I can see with one eye and I can still hear. It will get better over time.”
Emma is currently being seen by hospital staff on a weekly basis and administering six doses of eye drops every two hours.
She is now calling on others to take proper care of their contact lenses in order to protect their eyesight. Emma said: “You don’t think about the knock-on effect just by not taking your contact lenses out in the shower or to swim in, or to wash your face in my case.
“When you go to the opticians they do tell you don’t swim or shower in your contact lenses because you might get an infection and that’s it.
“I still wear my contact lenses in my left eye because it isn’t the contact lens that did this but it was the wearer [me] not having the knowledge of how to look after them properly and what not to do,” she added.
“You’ve got to be careful with your eyes, until you’ve been through this or know someone you are quite blasé.”