So, after rubbing and scratching around your eye for the past several days, it becomes swollen and really painful. The next day you decide to go to the eye doctor. The doctor lets you know it's a cyst and an operation is required. You wake up after the operation and the doctor tells you he found a gas-permeable contact lens inside the sore! Gas-permeable contact lenses, not to be confused with "soft" or "hard" contact lenses, are made of a rigid and durable plastic that transmits oxygen.
You rack your brain trying to remember how the heck a contact lens was stuck in there... I mean, it's been twenty-eight years since you've last worn one...
Well, this is what happened to a 42-year-old British woman!
The cyst grew over a time span of six months, the eyelid was swollen, and felt pain when touched. But, the million dollar question is: How did it get stuck in there in the first place?!
Her mother remembered an accident when she was fourteen: Her left eye was hit by a shuttlecock while playing badminton. She was wearing contact lenses at the time, and the injured eye contact lens was never found! They just assumed that the contact lens had popped out and was lost.
From then on, she vouched to never use contact lens again.
The woman had no signs of a trapped contact lens after her injury healed. The symptoms usually include light sensitivity, sharp or scratchy pain, and/or redness.
It is very common for one to lose a contact lens in an eyelid, but it not so common for the body to surround and envelop a lens as a foreign object.
Thus, next time you head to the eye doctor, please tell him or her about any past eye trauma or eye swelling that you've had.
And seriously, WEAR GLASSES INSTEAD IF YOU CAN'T SEE!!!