7 ms·

I had acanthamoeba in 2001. You pretty much have to have a corneal abrasion (scratch) before introducing the eye to water. It's not something you're going to

I had acanthamoeba in 2001. You pretty much have to have a corneal abrasion (scratch) before introducing the eye to water. It's not something you're going to get randomly from taking a shower or swimming. However, wearing contacts regularly for the last twenty years, I tend to get an abrasion once every two years or so. I'm extra careful during these times.. In 2001, there were about 7 cases in the US per year. It took me 6 months of excruciating pain and three eye doctors just to diagnose it. Luckily the third doctor really knew what he was doing. He diagnosed it in about 2-3 visits, snuck me some non-FDA approved drops with chlorine in them, and got rid of the infection. I had to do a corneal transplant and still can't see very well out of it - cloudy with an astigmatism too large to correct. Here's a good resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972779/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972779/

karmacoda 9y ago
I tried contacts twice, a few years apart. On both occasions, a few weeks in, I ended up sitting in front of an opthalmologist having had what seems to have been a corneal abrasion from the contact lens. The opthalmologist couldn't find anything wrong, and I can only guess that maybe a dry eye caused the lens to stick to both the ball and lid, then moving the lid yanked the lens and in turn the ball. Seriously sharp pain and eye streaming.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
> snuck me some non-FDA approved drops with chlorine in them Yikes! I mean, that'd do it, but yikes. I wonder how much chlorine it takes. Would swimming in the local pool with your eyes open help count as treatment? Probably not, the article says it's "common in tap water, sea water and swimming pools." Still.
- _delirium 9y ago
  My guess is that it was chlorhexidine drops. It's a disinfectant compound that contains chlorine, but isn't directly comparable to the free chlorine that acts as a pool disinfectant. The drops approved in Europe (and used to treat AK) are chlorhexidine 0.02%.
  - thrillgore 9y ago
    Chlorhexidine is a very common and essential medicine (according to the WHO, at least). It kills damn near anything microbial it touches.
  - piptastic 9y ago
    This sounds right, they were sourced from the UK. Sorry, I don't remember exactly, I was much younger then.
bonafidehan 9y ago
How can you tell that you have a corneal abrasion?
- lostlogin 9y ago
  It's can be quite unpleasant. The test for it is very straight forward - eye drops and someone looks into your eye. Wear goggles when grinding steel and even if you do, take care when washing your face afterwards. Steel stuck in your cornea, cutting your eyelid when blinking is terrible.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    > Wear goggles when grinding steel and even if you do, take care when washing your face afterwards. Go one further: Goggles and a face shield, minimum. Why? Have you ever had a right-angle grinder wheel explode? I have (it was actually a cut-off wheel). At the time I wasn't wearing even goggles, just my eye glasses. Amazingly, nothing hit me in the face, but I do remember hearing the part ricochet around my friend's shop (fortunately, I was the only one in it at the time). Unfortunately, a piece hit my knuckle - extremely hard; I thought I had lost my finger, but amazingly not (oh, I wasn't wearing gloves, either). I should've got stitches, but my friend took care of it; we washed it out, wrapped it up, then he gave me a percocet to take the edge off the pain. I remember at one point we looked at it after it had been a few hours, to see if I could still move it; I started to flex it, and had a small Monty Python flesh-wound moment (seriously, it made me laugh it was so cliche looking - though completely real); but I could move it. All's good today, still typing with it! Basically me doing everything wrong (it really was all my fault, I shouldn't have been handling that equipment - I think I was also wearing shorts, a t-shirt and open-toe sandals at the time - a total DERP moment, but that's all it took), I knew better even then, but I was stupid that day. Faster than you can blink, bam, and there it was. I take a lot more precautions now before I handle spinning cutting/grinding shit moving at 20k RPM (though I am still not a fan of my friend's open-guard 9 inch grinder - the thing will grind anything off anything, but holy hell is it dangerous to use - if that thing let loose, no amount of safety equipment will save you). Oh - and if you are arc welding, don't wear a white shirt; reflection of the arc can bounce off inside your helmet, and still cause "welder's blindness" - which is basically a nice sunburn to the cornea; generally not a permanent thing, but hurts like hell for a long while.
jacquesm 9y ago
I've had one due to dropping some stucco into my eye when working on a ceiling, before I realized what happened my eye had rotated causing some pretty deep scratches. Both extremely painful and took surprisingly long to heal.
reenw 9y ago
Hello pietistic, I'm the person in the piece, I hope you don't mind my responding to you directly. I'm sorry you had AK, and I hope you're doing better now. Just to be clear, swimming in contact lenses is an incontrovertible risk factor for AK- several studies have proved this. Moorfields Eye Hospital are also concluding a case control study which will also identify showering in contact lenses is a risk factor. Here's professor John Dart from Moorfields Eye Hospital talking about these risk factors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUYomeUkYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUYomeUkYM. Any questions let me know. thanks!
- MandieD 9y ago
  I had a relatively minor eye infection a few years ago, but wanting to prevent something worse, had switched to wearing contacts only for special occasions and... swimming. Thanks to your sharing, I will no longer swim with them. I'll try prescription goggles instead.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Jesus, I even swim in lakes with mine in. Guess I'll be seriously looking at the the risks+cost of laser vision correction versus contacts in the near future. And switching to daily disposables in the meantime. I've worn them for 15 years and am not very careful, it's a miracle I haven't had any infections of any sort yet, I guess.
    - zaneyard 9y ago
      Getting LASEK was one of the better decisions I've made in life. The risk of infection is extremely low for the procedure but you need to be extra careful while you're healing. It may not be worth the price if your vision is currently not that awful, however.
      - SpikeDad 9y ago
        According to this article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6305599 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6305599 there is a 1 in 100K chance of serious complications for modern LASIX requiring corneal transplant. That's a higher incidence than the chance of getting AK if you wear contact lenses. Both are terrible complications but I don't see the rationale of avoiding AK by getting LASIX. I couldn't find any literature but it seems to me that the fact that LASIX damages the cornea for a time would also leave one open to an infection in addition to the complications.
falcolas 9y ago
Anecdotally, I agree: it can't be that easy. I've worn contacts for most of my life (including while doing competitive swimming, showering, etc), and recently (3 years ago) got into scleral lenses (which included instructions from my optometrist to rinse these contacts in cold water to rid them of preservatives). If the formula really was "tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces eye infection", I would have been blind before I could vote. Maybe I'm just that lucky. A shame my lottery tickets disagree.
- bostonpete 9y ago
  > Anecdotally, I agree: it can't be that easy. Not to be too dismissive about your experiences, but making medical-related decisions based on anecdotal evidence is a really bad idea -- the debate over vaccines is a good example of this IMO. Have a look at reenw's numerous comments in this thread for references to sources/studies that suggest that it can be that easy...
- brianpan 9y ago
  Acanthamoeba is an amoeba that lives in the water. So yes, it's tap water plus handling your contacts in the same way that touching a door knob can give you a cold. Just because you've touched door knobs without getting a cold doesn't mean you shouldn't wash your hands. It's not the lottery, that's how infections work.
- mustacheemperor 9y ago
  >if "tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces eye infection", I would have been blind before I could vote. Tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces significantly elevated risks of eye infection. Your lottery ticket comparison is apt, since as the article and some other comments here reflect, you are gambling your sight with this attitude. Same one everyone hears from the guy who doesn't wear glasses while he's running a lathe. The difference being, at least that guy can argue his skill reduces his risk of injury. Would it be wise to stop looking both ways before crossing the street because the first three times you tried it you weren't struck by a car?
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nashequilibrium 9y ago
This is scary, I have 1 month disposables but use them for 1-3 months, I always insert them with wet hands, I shower with them on most days, I swim at the gym with them but use goggles. I've been doing this for the last 14yrs, time to change my habits! If I understand correctly, you have to have an open wound for this to occur?

karmacoda 9y ago

I tried contacts twice, a few years apart. On both occasions, a few weeks in, I ended up sitting in front of an opthalmologist having had what seems to have been a corneal abrasion from the contact lens. The opthalmologist couldn't find anything wrong, and I can only guess that maybe a dry eye caused the lens to stick to both the ball and lid, then moving the lid yanked the lens and in turn the ball. Seriously sharp pain and eye streaming.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

> snuck me some non-FDA approved drops with chlorine in them Yikes! I mean, that'd do it, but yikes. I wonder how much chlorine it takes. Would swimming in the local pool with your eyes open help count as treatment? Probably not, the article says it's "common in tap water, sea water and swimming pools." Still.

_delirium 9y ago
My guess is that it was chlorhexidine drops. It's a disinfectant compound that contains chlorine, but isn't directly comparable to the free chlorine that acts as a pool disinfectant. The drops approved in Europe (and used to treat AK) are chlorhexidine 0.02%.
- thrillgore 9y ago
  Chlorhexidine is a very common and essential medicine (according to the WHO, at least). It kills damn near anything microbial it touches.
- piptastic 9y ago
  This sounds right, they were sourced from the UK. Sorry, I don't remember exactly, I was much younger then.

bonafidehan 9y ago

How can you tell that you have a corneal abrasion?

lostlogin 9y ago
It's can be quite unpleasant. The test for it is very straight forward - eye drops and someone looks into your eye. Wear goggles when grinding steel and even if you do, take care when washing your face afterwards. Steel stuck in your cornea, cutting your eyelid when blinking is terrible.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > Wear goggles when grinding steel and even if you do, take care when washing your face afterwards. Go one further: Goggles and a face shield, minimum. Why? Have you ever had a right-angle grinder wheel explode? I have (it was actually a cut-off wheel). At the time I wasn't wearing even goggles, just my eye glasses. Amazingly, nothing hit me in the face, but I do remember hearing the part ricochet around my friend's shop (fortunately, I was the only one in it at the time). Unfortunately, a piece hit my knuckle - extremely hard; I thought I had lost my finger, but amazingly not (oh, I wasn't wearing gloves, either). I should've got stitches, but my friend took care of it; we washed it out, wrapped it up, then he gave me a percocet to take the edge off the pain. I remember at one point we looked at it after it had been a few hours, to see if I could still move it; I started to flex it, and had a small Monty Python flesh-wound moment (seriously, it made me laugh it was so cliche looking - though completely real); but I could move it. All's good today, still typing with it! Basically me doing everything wrong (it really was all my fault, I shouldn't have been handling that equipment - I think I was also wearing shorts, a t-shirt and open-toe sandals at the time - a total DERP moment, but that's all it took), I knew better even then, but I was stupid that day. Faster than you can blink, bam, and there it was. I take a lot more precautions now before I handle spinning cutting/grinding shit moving at 20k RPM (though I am still not a fan of my friend's open-guard 9 inch grinder - the thing will grind anything off anything, but holy hell is it dangerous to use - if that thing let loose, no amount of safety equipment will save you). Oh - and if you are arc welding, don't wear a white shirt; reflection of the arc can bounce off inside your helmet, and still cause "welder's blindness" - which is basically a nice sunburn to the cornea; generally not a permanent thing, but hurts like hell for a long while.

jacquesm 9y ago

I've had one due to dropping some stucco into my eye when working on a ceiling, before I realized what happened my eye had rotated causing some pretty deep scratches. Both extremely painful and took surprisingly long to heal.

reenw 9y ago

Hello pietistic, I'm the person in the piece, I hope you don't mind my responding to you directly. I'm sorry you had AK, and I hope you're doing better now. Just to be clear, swimming in contact lenses is an incontrovertible risk factor for AK- several studies have proved this. Moorfields Eye Hospital are also concluding a case control study which will also identify showering in contact lenses is a risk factor. Here's professor John Dart from Moorfields Eye Hospital talking about these risk factors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUYomeUkYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neUYomeUkYM. Any questions let me know. thanks!

MandieD 9y ago
I had a relatively minor eye infection a few years ago, but wanting to prevent something worse, had switched to wearing contacts only for special occasions and... swimming. Thanks to your sharing, I will no longer swim with them. I'll try prescription goggles instead.
- ashark 9y ago
  Jesus, I even swim in lakes with mine in. Guess I'll be seriously looking at the the risks+cost of laser vision correction versus contacts in the near future. And switching to daily disposables in the meantime. I've worn them for 15 years and am not very careful, it's a miracle I haven't had any infections of any sort yet, I guess.
  - zaneyard 9y ago
    Getting LASEK was one of the better decisions I've made in life. The risk of infection is extremely low for the procedure but you need to be extra careful while you're healing. It may not be worth the price if your vision is currently not that awful, however.
    - SpikeDad 9y ago
      According to this article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6305599 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6305599 there is a 1 in 100K chance of serious complications for modern LASIX requiring corneal transplant. That's a higher incidence than the chance of getting AK if you wear contact lenses. Both are terrible complications but I don't see the rationale of avoiding AK by getting LASIX. I couldn't find any literature but it seems to me that the fact that LASIX damages the cornea for a time would also leave one open to an infection in addition to the complications.

falcolas 9y ago

Anecdotally, I agree: it can't be that easy. I've worn contacts for most of my life (including while doing competitive swimming, showering, etc), and recently (3 years ago) got into scleral lenses (which included instructions from my optometrist to rinse these contacts in cold water to rid them of preservatives). If the formula really was "tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces eye infection", I would have been blind before I could vote. Maybe I'm just that lucky. A shame my lottery tickets disagree.

bostonpete 9y ago
> Anecdotally, I agree: it can't be that easy. Not to be too dismissive about your experiences, but making medical-related decisions based on anecdotal evidence is a really bad idea -- the debate over vaccines is a good example of this IMO. Have a look at reenw's numerous comments in this thread for references to sources/studies that suggest that it can be that easy...
brianpan 9y ago
Acanthamoeba is an amoeba that lives in the water. So yes, it's tap water plus handling your contacts in the same way that touching a door knob can give you a cold. Just because you've touched door knobs without getting a cold doesn't mean you shouldn't wash your hands. It's not the lottery, that's how infections work.
mustacheemperor 9y ago
>if "tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces eye infection", I would have been blind before I could vote. Tap water and mis-care of contact lenses induces significantly elevated risks of eye infection. Your lottery ticket comparison is apt, since as the article and some other comments here reflect, you are gambling your sight with this attitude. Same one everyone hears from the guy who doesn't wear glasses while he's running a lathe. The difference being, at least that guy can argue his skill reduces his risk of injury. Would it be wise to stop looking both ways before crossing the street because the first three times you tried it you weren't struck by a car?
- 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nashequilibrium 9y ago

This is scary, I have 1 month disposables but use them for 1-3 months, I always insert them with wet hands, I shower with them on most days, I swim at the gym with them but use goggles. I've been doing this for the last 14yrs, time to change my habits! If I understand correctly, you have to have an open wound for this to occur?