Emma Marsden: Lancashire woman may lose vision after parasite burrows into cornea

A mother of three has had to have her eye sewn shut after her eye was eaten by a parasite because she made a simple mistake.

Emma Marsden was with her horses in Lancashire, UK, on February 28 when she took a tumble.

The 47-year-old wound up covered in mud after she fell head first into a wheelbarrow filled with dirt and water.

Ms Marsden went back into her house and washed the mud off her face and hands, but made one fatal mistake.

It was not until later that evening that she removed her contact lenses.

Four days later, she was hit by “excruciating” pain in her right eye - which was stinging, according to The Mirror, and she was referred to a hospital after visiting her GP.

Initially, Ms Marsden was given eye drops to manage what doctors believed was an ulcer.

However, in the following days, her pain intensified and Ms Marsden lost vision from her eye.

A week after the initial wheelbarrow dive, Ms Marsden was diagnosed with a rare eye infection caused by a burrowing parasite in her cornea.

Acanthamoeba keratitis is caused by a microscopic organism that can often be found in tap water, swimming pools, and other bodies of water.

At least 90 per cent of cases are in contact lens wearers.

Ms Marsden was also told she had a severe fungal infection of the cornea, fusarium keratitis, as well as ulcers on her cornea.

Doctors said they believed she would have contracted the infections by not removing her contacts while washing her face.

“My eye was excruciatingly painful and red. When I woke up the next morning, any time light hit my eye the pain was so severe I couldn’t open my eyes,” Ms Marsden said.

After the parasite had “eaten through” her cornea, her eyelids were sewn shut and she was prescribed hourly eye drops.

The prospect of losing sight in her eye was terrifying for the mother of three.

“It’s pretty heartbreaking to think I might never see out of that eye again,” she said.

It is likely Ms Marsden will require a cornea transplant in the coming years.

“It’s excruciatingly painful and everything just stops, your life stops. I’ve had three kids and giving birth is a dream compared to this pain,” she said.

“It eats through your eye and cornea and all your nerves. The speed it ate at the doctors couldn’t believe it.”

Ms Marsden is urging other contact lens wearers to be more cautious.

“You don’t think about the knock-on effect just by not taking your contact lenses out in the shower or to swim in, or to wash your face in my case,” she said.

“When you go to the opticians they do tell you don’t swim or shower in your contact lenses because you might get an infection and that’s it.

“I still wear my contact lenses in my left eye because it isn’t the contact lens that did this but it was the wearer (me) not having the knowledge of how to look after them properly and what not to do.

“You’ve got to be careful with your eyes, until you’ve been through this or know someone you are quite blasé.”

The Lancashire woman’s recovery is ongoing, more than four months since the wheelbarrow incident.

She is required to visit the hospital weekly and had six doses of eye drops every two hours.

But Ms Marsden acknowledges that it certainly could be worse.

“You have no choice but to get on with it, you can’t sit there wallowing in self-pity,” she said.

“It’s a bad situation but I’m still here. I can walk, I can see with one eye and I can still hear. It will get better over time.”