Woman left in tears after going blind for a month when getting eyelash extensions while wearing contact lenses
A lot of women are willing to do anything for a good set of lashes, but going blind isn't one of them.
So you can imagine how mortified Lillie Barrett was when she lost sight in one of her eyes for several months after undergoing the popular beauty treatment while wearing contact lenses.
The 22-year-old explained she began to experience some discomfort in her left eye around six hours after she had got a set of fluffy Russian lashes fitted at a cost of £55 in November 2022.
She removed her monthly contact lenses - which can be worn for a month, as the name suggests, but have to be cleaned each day - upon returning home hoping it would ease the irritation, only to find that it was just growing more intense.
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Lillie explained: "Overnight, my eye wouldn't stop watering and I thought it was just my allergies playing up or that I had contracted conjunctivitis because I had been around kids recently. I went to a chemist the next day."
She picked up some eye drops under the assumption that she was suffering from conjunctivitis, but said that her peepers continued to water while also becoming 'swollen and really red'.
"For about two days, I left it, as I just thought it was conjunctivitis. I had yellow bits in my eye," the receptionist continued.
"This then stopped coming out of my eye and became stuck on my cornea. By the second or third day, I lost all my vision."
The young woman was obviously panicked when she was no longer able to see out of her left eye and said she intended to drive herself straight to the doctors - until she realised it was too dangerous for her to get behind the wheel.
Lillie recalled: "I realised I couldn't as I didn't have any 3D vision. Everything looked flat because I couldn't see out of this eye."
She obviously looked quite the sight for sore eyes at this point as well, as her peeper had been incessantly weeping for two days and had even changed colour.
The receptionist, from Welling in South East London, was rushed to the emergency department at St Helier Hospital in Sutton, where an eye specialist told her she had developed an ulcer on her cornea.
According to the NHS, a corneal ulcer is an open sore in the outer layer of the cornea that occurs when the surface is damaged and is said to be more common in contact lens wearers.
Lillie said: "Someone in the eye department said to me I wasn't going to get my vision back unless I went through with surgery. I broke into tears as I was so shocked at what had happened."
Although the consultant was unable to definitively pinpoint the cause of her corneal ulcer, the 22-year-old is convinced that it was caused by bacteria coming into contact with her contact lens after she had her lashes done.
Lillie is now warning other contact lens wearers to be careful and urged others to ditch their monthly lenses for daily disposable ones as she reckons they hold less risk of infection.
She was eventually discharged from hospital with eyedrops and pain relief, but had to return for check ups until May 2023, a whopping seven months after her original lash appointment.
Lillie claimed that her eye remained discoloured for the large majority of this time, which knocked her confidence and left her retreating indoors as people were 'looking at her strangely'.
"I was really upset about it," she added. "My vision started to come back slowly after using the eyedrops and having hospital checkups. I can now see a lot more than I could but my vision is still bad.
"I can see shadows and people when they're in front of me but that is only if I close one eye. If both eyes are open it makes it harder to see."
Lillie explained that she had been offered surgery to help restore her vision, but she initially turned it down as her eyes seemed to be healing slowly and she was too scared to take another risk with her eyes.
However, after sharing her story on social media and hearing from others have been through a similar thing, she is reconsidering her decision about going under the knife.
She added: "The surgery was to help me regain some of my vision back by doing work on my cornea, but I didn't take the surgery as they said there was a risk my eye could go back to square one again.
"Now I've seen people's comments on TikTok about how the surgery worked really well for them, I think I would consider getting it done to regain some more of my vision.
"If I was to give anyone some advice it would be to just be careful when wearing contacts and definitely go to the hospital sooner as I left it for two or three days before doing so."
Lillie claims she has still not fully regained sight in her left eye almost a year-and-a-half on from the infection.
Olivia Burke