A Texas mother has gone blind in one eye after making a serious mistake with her contact lenses.
Last year, Rachel Prochnow, a lifestyle writer from Austin, Texas, did something she’d done countless times before: She showered without removing her contact lenses.
What started as some mild irritation in her right eye quickly deteriorated. ‘The pain makes giving birth feel like a walk in the damn park. [It] was completely unreal.’
Within two weeks, Mrs. Prochnow, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, had gone completely blind on that side.
Doctors told her that a parasite in the water had entered her eye, probably while she was showering, and had burrowed into the delicate tissue and damaged it.
Mrs. Prochnow first noticed something was wrong when her eye felt a little hoarse and sensitive to light. Soon she was in excruciating pain and could see nothing but light and hand movements
She had always been careful about taking care of her eyes, having worn contact lenses since she was 12. She always removed them at night, cleaned them thoroughly, and threw away her contact lens cases regularly to keep everything sterile.
But she didn’t know that showering, swimming or sitting in a hot tub with her contact lenses in could leave her vulnerable to infection.
“I thought I was doing everything right. I wasn’t,” she said.
Ultimately, doctors diagnosed acanthamoeba keratitis.
‘Due to the severity of the disease, we had to induce labor at 27 weeks,’ she said on TikTokand said she was still “fighting this painful disease” two months after giving birth.
The condition is caused by the acathamoeba parasite, a single-celled organism found in lakes, oceans, tap water, soil and air, According to the CDC.
It is estimated that 1,500 Americans get it each year. The Cleveland Clinic. About 90 percent of cases occur in people who wear contact lenses.
It affects the cornea, which is the clear, outer layer of the eye. Wearing contact lenses can cause microscopic tears in this layer – which the Acanthamoeba parasite can enter.
If the parasites successfully enter your cornea, they can multiply and spread, causing eye pain, redness, blurred vision, light sensitivity, and watery eyes, eventually leading to blindness.
AK affects an estimated 1,500 Americans each year, making it a rare condition. Still, Ms. Prochnow said she wants to raise awareness because she was never told not to swim or shower with her contacts in.
If doctors detect the condition early enough, they can easily treat it with eye drops.
In about 40 percent of cases, doctors have to perform surgery, which involves scraping the outside of the eye to remove the parasites. Later, the area is restored with a transplant.
That is what Mrs. Prochnow had to go through.
After initially being misdiagnosed by five different doctors, she consulted specialists and had her cornea scraped.
She then began a strict three-month treatment with eye drops, which she had to inject every 30 minutes, with the help of her parents and her husband Cameron.
She was also put on heavy medications, similar to those used to treat cancer, and had to have regular blood tests to make sure the drugs weren’t causing her liver failure.
“If my parents and Cameron hadn’t put in all their effort to help me through this, I would definitely be in trouble,” she said.
A year and 82 doctor visits after she was first diagnosed, Ms. Prochnow underwent surgery to have her cornea replaced with one from a deceased donor.
The operation went well.
Where she could only see light and hand movements, she can now see and read the largest letters on a vision chart. Her vision is far from perfect, but she can correct it with glasses.
Now she’s focused on raising awareness about the condition and raising her one-year-old daughter Lachlan, who was born in July 2023.
Tips to reduce your risk of this infection include: removing your contact lenses before showering, not swimming with your contact lenses in, never using tap water to clean your contact lenses or clean your contact lens case, and not wearing your contact lenses longer than necessary.
The Texan mother shared her story in a Instagram post which has received more than 742,000 likes.