Mother-of-four, 36, left blind in one eye after leaving her contact lenses in for TWO WEEKS: ‘Felt like I was stabbed’

Katie Carrington, who works as a nurse, is used to helping people who risk their health with careless mistakes, but that doesn’t make her immune to similar missteps.

The 36-year-old mother of four was left blind in one eye after she got into the habit of wearing her daily contact lenses for up to two weeks, and her shortsightedness caught up with her last summer.

He said: ‘One night in August 2025 I was lying in bed and my eyes were throbbing and running.

‘The next morning I woke up in excruciating pain; It was worse than giving birth.

‘I couldn’t see my right eye at all. Doctors weren’t sure if my vision would return.

‘I became so depressed thinking I wouldn’t be able to see my children grow up.’

Miss Carrington, from Romford, Essex, was told she needed glasses at 16 and started wearing daily disposable lenses at 17.

He developed a bad habit of not removing his contact lenses after going out at night, and soon he was wearing the same lenses for weeks at a time.

He was blind in his right eye for five weeks

Every few months, Ms. Carrington would lose the contact lens behind her eye and remove it herself with her fingers.

He said: ‘I was really stupid; I used my contact lenses incorrectly.

‘At first I would go to parties and not take them out at night but then I started wearing them for extremely long periods of time.

‘Sometimes I’d be terrible and wear them for a week or two, wait until my eyes got really dry, and then I’d take them off and replace them.

‘I did this for convenience. My vision is pretty bad, so I hated the fact that I woke up and couldn’t see.

‘Looking back now, I don’t know why I did it.’

But that night in August, he could see that something was seriously wrong.

As he lay in bed, his eyes began to throb and water began to flow from his eyes.

He had to wear an eyepatch and take a month off from work

Doctors weren’t sure if his vision would return

Mrs. Carrington didn’t think much of it, but took off her contact lenses and tried to sleep.

Her eyes continued to bleed throughout the night and she woke up in the morning with ‘excruciating’ pain, which she described as worse than childbirth.

He could not see outside his right eye at all and felt as if he had been ‘stabbed in the eye’. After wrapping a scarf around her head, she had her husband take her to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

He could no longer see in his right eye, and doctors were unsure if his vision would return.

Doctors scraped his eyeballs to test for microorganisms that could cause blindness, which he described as “traumatic.”

They explained that a small piece of bacteria could get into their contact lenses and cause an infection, which could lead to blindness.

Ms. Carrington was told to wear an eyepatch and was told it was uncertain whether her eyesight would return.

He had to administer eye drops every hour for 48 hours, even at night, and had weekly checks at Moorfields to see if his condition was improving.

He fell into depression when he couldn’t work.

The stressed mum took four weeks off work to recover, during which she felt ‘depressed’ as she felt losing her eyesight had taken away her independence.

Unable to drive there, she considered quitting her job and began to panic about how she would adjust to her partial vision problem.

Daily life and managing the family home became incredibly difficult, and he felt like it was his fault when he spilled something on the floor because he couldn’t see what he was doing.

He said: ‘Even though I only had one eye, I felt like all my independence had been taken away from me.

‘Daily tasks have become very difficult. ‘When I was making a bottle for my baby, I was spilling it everywhere and I had to focus so hard to smash things in the kitchen.’

She was relieved when five weeks later Ms Carrington’s vision returned to normal.

Doctors said that the blindness was caused by bacteria settling in the eye behind contact lenses and causing infection.

Fortunately, his vision gradually improved and after five weeks his vision returned to normal.

He swore he would never use contact lenses again.

Ms Carrington is now urging others to think twice before wearing contact lenses for long periods of time.

Doctors told her she could wear contact lenses again, but she said it wasn’t worth it.

‘If one person learns from this that contact lenses should not be abandoned, then I feel like I’m making a difference,’ he said.

‘Thank God I can see again, but I will never wear contact lenses again.

‘This was my fault and I take full responsibility, but I did not know the risks involved.

‘I would encourage contact lens wearers to read about the risks. ‘I thought this would never happen to me because I had been free of it for so long, but now I’m focused on looking after myself.’