I've always preferred glasses over contact lenses, and after hearing the story shared in the August issue of the medical journal BMJ Case Reports, I don't think I'll be changing my mind any time soon. It tells the straight-up batshit tale of a woman whose long-lost contact lens was found 28 years after it went missing — and it had become a part of her eyelid.
The unnamed 42-year-old British woman became concerned when her left eyelid appeared swollen and droopy for several months, with an increasingly tender lump under her eyebrow. Upon reviewing an MRI, her ophthalmologist determined that she had a cyst in the soft tissue of the eyelid that would require surgical excision. "On removal, the cyst ruptured and a hard contact lens was extracted," the report reads. "It was later confirmed that this was an RGP lens," also known as a rigid gas-permeable contact lens. It was apparently fully intact when found, but so fragile that it cracked upon removal.
I'm guessing your second question after "Are you fucking kidding?" is "How could something like this happen?" Well, according to her mother, the patient was violently smacked in the face with a shuttlecock while playing badminton when she was just 14 years old. She was wearing RGP contacts at the time, and when she couldn't find the left one and didn't have any lasting symptoms, they assumed it had dislodged from the blow, never to be seen again. "We can infer that the RGP lens migrated into the patient’s left upper eyelid at the time of trauma and had been in situ for the last 28 years," during which she didn't wear that type of contact lens again, the report states.
According to the report, "Spontaneous migration of a hard contact lens into the eyelid is a relatively known occurrence," though rarely do they go missing up there long enough to become so embedded in a person's eyelid tissue that they present as a cyst. But it's not just hard and rigid contacts that can mosey on up above the eyeball; you may recall the shudder-worthy story from last year about a woman whose doctor found 27 soft, disposable contact lenses stuck under her eyelid.
If you haven't been skeeved out of ever wearing contacts again, your best bet is to visit an ophthalmologist after enduring an eye-area injury while wearing contact lenses — especially if one suddenly goes missing. Even without a trauma, if you experience persistent symptoms like irritation or swelling, let an ophthalmologist take a look under your lids to make sure you're not unwittingly storing any lenses in there.
Follow Marci on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to Allure's newsletter for daily beauty stories delivered right to your inbox.
Source: Read Full Article