Maxim Sleptsov: Siberian man diagnosed with plant growing in his eye after months of headaches
Doctors have found a germinated plant taking root inside the eyeball of a man who endured months of splitting headaches and double vision.
A man who sought medical treatment after suffering months of extreme headaches and double vision was found to have a plant taking root inside his eyeball.
Doctors made the shocking discovery during a close examination of Russian national Maxim Sleptsov’s eye, according to The Sun.
Surgeons found during the removal of the germinated seed that its roots had sunk 3mm deep into the sensitive white conjunctival tissue of his eye.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The Siberian 42-year-old’s bizarre diagnosis followed four painful months in which he endured splitting headaches, double vision and extreme inflammation.
Medical experts traced the origins of his ordeal back to a summer holiday in the Abyysky district in Russia’s north where he said he was hit in the face by a branch.
“A branch caught me in the eye,” he told Russian local outlet Exo-Ykt.
“It whipped across my face.
“My eye was itchy and painful, as if I’d bruised or scratched it. It was watering and red.”
While he removed a small piece of bark while rinsing out his eye afterwards, the accident still left a small seed lodged in his eyeball’s delicate tissue.
It was this seed which would soon lead to the tradie’s crippling bouts of pain and deteriorating vision.
“I was suffering from constant migraines,” he said. “I woke in the mornings with a terrible headache.”
After returning to Siberia, he sought medical help at the capital of Yakutsk, where the shocking source of his pain was discovered.
Doctors at the Emergency Optometry Centre found that the tiny root reaching out from the seed was now penetrating the delicate membrane covering the white of the eye.
“Most surprisingly, it had sprouted, and its roots had actually penetrated the conjunctival tissue,” chief physician Ivan Lutskan said.
The sprouting seed was eventually excised from Maxim’s eye by opthamologist Elizaveta Karpova, who used an injection needle to do so.
“I had never encountered a case like this in my practice before,” she said.
“The seed’s root had reached approximately 3mm in length.”
Maxim’s painful eyeball discovery came just two weeks after reports of a 16-year-old Indian boy who became the world’s first case of an ectopic tooth growing out an eye.
