As a nurse, Katie Carrington (36) was used to helping patients who paid the price for their own carelessness. However, this did not protect her from the same fate. A mother-of-four has been left temporarily blind in one eye after making a habit of leaving one-day contact lenses in her eyes for weeks at a time. writes
Katie, from Romford, England, wore glasses from the age of 16 and switched to daily contact lenses a year later. However, she gradually developed a dangerous bad habit – she stopped taking them out at night. The situation escalated in August 2025 when it caught up with her. One morning she woke up in excruciating pain and found that she could not see at all in her right eye.
“I was really stupid. At first I went to parties and didn’t choose them at night, but later I started wearing them for an unreasonable amount of time,” she recalls. Sometimes she wore the same pair of lenses for a week or two at a time. She only chose them when her eyes were too dry. “I have pretty bad eyesight and I hated the feeling of waking up and not seeing anything. Looking back, I don’t understand why I did it,” adds.
But in August 2025, she sensed that something was wrong. At night, her eyes began to throb and water. Although she removed the lenses, the pain did not subside. In the morning she woke up in agony. “The pain was unbearable, worse than during childbirth. I felt as if someone was stabbing me in the eye,” she describes the terrifying moments. She could see nothing at all in her right eye. Her husband immediately took her to a hospital in London.
Doctors had to scrape the surface of her eyeball to test for microorganisms, which Katie described as a traumatic experience. The diagnosis was clear: bacteria trapped under the contact lens had caused a serious infection leading to blindness. However, the prognosis was not clear – the doctors could not guarantee whether her sight would return. 48 hours of intensive treatment followed, when you had to drop medicine in your eye every hour (even at night).
Katie stayed at home for four weeks. She felt depressed and she was afraid she wouldn’t see her children grow up and normal activities became a struggle. “When I was making milk for the baby, I spilled it everywhere. I had to be extremely focused in the kitchen so I wouldn’t hurt myself while cutting,” she recalls.
To the relief of the whole family, her vision returned to normal after five weeks. Although doctors have told her she can wear contact lenses again, Katie refuses. “It’s not worth it. Thank God I can see again, but I’ll never wear lenses again,” he says firmly.
He shares his story as a warning to others: “It was my fault and I take full responsibility, but I didn’t know the risks. If at least one person learns a lesson and doesn’t leave the lenses in their eyes for too long, then it made sense,” she concluded.
