Katie Carrington started wearing daily disposable lenses at age 17 (Image: Katie Carrington/SWNS)
A healthcare worker lost vision in one eye after repeatedly wearing her daily contact lenses for fortnight-long stretches. Mother-of-four Katie Carrington, 36, began using daily disposable lenses aged 17 and developed poor habits of keeping them in following evenings out.
The nurse, from Romford, Essex, allowed her practices to deteriorate further – eventually wearing identical lenses for weeks consecutively, before being admitted to hospital with “unbearable” ocular pain in August 2025. She experienced complete vision loss in her right eye, with medical professionals uncertain about potential recovery.
Medical staff determined the blindness resulted from bacterial contamination trapped beneath the contact lenses, triggering an infection. Fortunately, her vision progressively recovered and within five weeks her eyesight returned to normal levels.
Katie now advocates for greater awareness regarding the dangers of prolonged contact lens wear.
She explained: “I was really stupid – I misused my contact lenses. At first, I would go to parties and not take them out at night, but then I started wearing them for excessive amounts of time.”
Katie Carrington got into a bad habit of not taking them out (Image: Katie Carrington/SWNS)
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“I’d be terrible sometimes and wear them for a week or two at a time, I’d wait until my eyes were really dry and then take them out and change them. I did it out of convenience. My eyesight is pretty bad, so I just hated the fact that I’d wake up and couldn’t see.
“Looking back now, I don’t know why I did it. One night in August 2025, I was lying in bed and my eyes were pounding and streaming.
“The next morning, I woke up in unbearable pain – it was worse than giving birth. I couldn’t see at all in my right eye. Doctors didn’t know if my sight would come back.
“I was so depressed, thinking I wouldn’t get to see my kids growing up. Even though it was just one eye, I felt like all my independence had been taken away from me.
Katie Carrington has shared a warning (Image: Katie Carrington/SWNS)
“Daily tasks became so hard. When I was making a bottle for my baby I would spill it everywhere and I had to focus so hard to cut things up in the kitchen.
“Thank the Lord I can see again, but I will never wear contacts again. It was my fault and I take full accountability, but I didn’t know the risks associated with them.
“I urge contact lens wearers to read up about the risks. I thought it would never happen to me, because I got away with it for so long, but now I’m focused on looking after myself.”
Katie was advised she required spectacles at 16, but despising her appearance whilst wearing them, she switched to contact lenses a year later. She bought daily disposable lenses through online retailers.
Periodically, Katie would misplace a contact lens behind her eye and would retrieve it manually using her fingers. One evening in August 2025, whilst Katie lay in bed, her eyes began throbbing intensely as tears streamed down her face.
Katie initially dismissed the discomfort, removing her lenses before attempting to sleep. However, her eyes streamed continuously overnight, and she awoke experiencing “unbearable” agony, which she likened to being worse than childbirth.
Unable to open her right eye whatsoever and feeling as though she was being “stabbed in the eye”, she wrapped a scarf around her head while her husband rushed her to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. Medical staff scraped her eyeballs to test for microorganisms that might have caused the vision loss, an experience she described as “traumatic”.
Clinicians explained that microscopic bacteria could have entered her contact lenses, triggering an infection which resulted in blindness. Katie was required to wear an eyepatch and was informed it remained uncertain whether her vision would return.
Katie Carrington (Image: Katie Carrington/SWNS)
Throughout 48 hours, she administered eye drops hourly, including through the night, and attended weekly appointments at Moorfields to monitor any improvement. She took four weeks’ leave from work to recuperate, during which she felt “depressed”, as losing her sight had robbed her of her independence.
She contemplated resigning from her position, as she couldn’t see well enough to drive there, and began worrying about adapting to life with partial sight. Everyday activities became extraordinarily challenging, and she would blame herself when spilling things on the floor, as she couldn’t see what she was doing.
Following a five-week period, Katie was relieved when her vision returned to normal. Medical professionals have informed her that wearing contact lenses remains an option, though she insists it’s “not worth it”.
“If one person learns from this that you shouldn’t leave contact lenses in, then I feel like I’ve made a difference”, she said.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
