A Northern Virginia woman needs a corneal transplant after a horrible eye infection she picked up at a swimming pool.
"I told her that this was very bad," said Ophthalmologist Dr. Abdel Ebash who is treating Kacie Fisher of Purcellville. She can barely see out of her right eye. An ulcer on her cornea has eaten away some of the tissue on her cornea.
"It was a big corneal ulcer. An ulcer is a bacterial infection and it was eating through the tissue," said Ebash.
"Within 24 hours my eye was swollen shut. I was in the hospital. And the infection was so bad that it was hard to even know whether a contact lens was in my eye," said Fisher.
Dr. Elbash thinks her contact lenses soaked up bacteria when she went swimming in a pool a few weeks ago. That was a shock to Fisher.
"I've always been pretty good about cleaning them. I've worn contacts for about 30 years," said Fisher.
To restore her vision, she will mostly likely need a corneal transplant.
"It was really scary and it's been a tremendous adjustment because I'm pretty active. I work as a psychologist and as an exercise instructor. Life has gotten put on hold in many ways," said Fisher, a mother of two young boys.
Dr. Elbash says 99 percent of his patients who develop corneal ulcers get them from misusing contacts.
"They're playing Russian Roulette with their contacts," Elbash says. Even tough some contacts advertise that it's okay to sleep in them, Elbash says that's a bad idea. He says the eyes need to breath and putting a contact over them "is like putting a plastic bag over you head." If you do sleep a night in contact lenses, they need to be throw out the next day, he said.
People will also stretch the limits in wearing contacts beyond the common two-week limit. Because disinfecting saline solutions are expensive, Dr. Elbash says people will reuse the liquid, and just top it off the next night. And..."You shouldn't swim with your contacts.. You should go into hot tubs, swimming pools, lakes, oceans with your contacts."
He says contacts are like a sponge and can easily absorb bacteria and if they're kept on the eyes, an infection can begin.
Kacie not only went swimming while wearing her contacts, she kept wearing them afterward. She had never heard not to swim while wearing contacts, but she's hoping others learn from her situation.
