A student suffered a serious injury after ripping the top layer of her eyeball off while trying to remove a contact lens. What’s worrying is that she had only left the contact on two hours over the recommended eight-hour limit.

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Meabh McHugh-Hill said that she had suffered in the past from dry eyes due to wearing contacts since she was 16-years-old. Sometimes she would keep them in for up to 12 hours at a time, which would starve her eyes from oxygen. Unfortunately, one night it all caught up with her and a lens became welded to her eye. Here’s Meabh’s story:

I settled down to watch a film with my boyfriend one evening when I realised I still had my contacts in.

I’d had them in for around 10 hours.

I ran upstairs to take them out and stupidly I just pinched my first eye like I normally would to get the contact out.

But I should have moistened them first because this time my eye was so dry the contact had actually glued itself to my eyeball.

After a few minutes the pain became unbearable and I woke up the next morning not being able to open my left eye.

I tried to look in the mirror but as soon as a tiny bit of daylight came in the room, my eye immediately forced itself closed.

It was awful.

That’s making my eyes water just thinking about it. Meabh went to see an optician who immediately referred her to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital:

The doctors said they were glad I had gone to them straight away and when they took a proper look they said I had scratched an entire layer off my whole eye.

The pain was intense. I wasn’t able to do much else besides stay in bed with the curtains drawn for the five days that followed.

Even going into the bathroom to take a shower was unbearable because of the light shining in through the window.

Luckily Meabh’s eye is on the mend, although she’s been told she’ll never be able to wear contacts again. Definitely a good thing – don’t want to risk that injury again.

For more eye-related stories, here’s one about a guy who got a huge nail jammed into his eyeball and somehow survived.