These contacts work so well, I'll just leave 'em in!

In My Humble Opinion
21

I did something similar a few days ago. Put my lenses in. My left one was screwy and I decided to put in new ones, it had been a while anyways. Swapped the left one, much better. The right one was wonky now. Almost like it was inside out. Took it out, looked fine, put it back in. Lather (well, don’t lather) rinse, repeat. Must have done this 4 or 5 times. And it just wasn’t right. FTR, I’ve worn contacts, different brands, different types, for over 20 years, I’m not new at this. The last time I took it out, it looked like it was ripped, but it was brand new and as I looked closer, I realized it was two lenses. I didn’t take the first one out before putting the new one in. I’ve never done that, but it was obvious that there was a problem right away.
As for the woman in question. I have to wonder if she jammed them all in there recently. Lets just assume for the moment that she managed to order them all online with no actual appointment. That’s fine. Hell, I have at about 24 lenses sitting in my bathroom right now and can order as many as I want online until my script expires in about 7 or 8 months without doing a thing. I could buy hundreds of them without raising anyone questioning me.

But surely someone looked in her eyes and diagnosed her with cataracts before deciding she needed surgery, right? And that couldn’t have been more than a month or two or three before the surgery I would guess?

To the OP, if you wear contacts, when you go to the eye doctor, the first thing they do is ask you to take them out. There’s no way an ophthalmologist would have checked her out with a single pair of lenses in her eyes. If she had two or three, I suppose she could have popped them out and back in and no one would have noticed, but if they had been built up that high, surely there would have been something going on that would have been noticeable during an exam. Some kind of swelling? Protein buildup? An infection? Really dry eyes?
Having said that, my WAG is that she was diagnosed with cataracts and then started jamming more and more lenses into her eyes. If she happened to develop a mental issue at the same time, she may have assumed her eyesight was supposed to be deteriorating and not thought anything of it.

22

Thanks, Joey P. The idea that this would have been a build-up over several years is the most baffling option in a series of baffling options. Not that I’m wishing mental illness of any kind of the person in question. But as someone above said, I think, the odds of doing some kind of severe and/or permanent eye damage would have to increase the longer they stay lodged in her eye, right?

I’ve started seeing this story pop up on more major media sites in the last couple of days. I’m guessing we’re going to find out more detail at some point.

23

Definitely not fake news since it’s now showing up on CNN. Apparently she would often go to remove her lens and couldn’t find it, so she figured she must have dropped it somewhere. Apparently it had migrated to another part of her eyeball, then over time she did this 27 times. From the article, it sounds like 17 were found clumped together in one part of her eye, and the other 10 were found in another part during a subsequent exam :eek: