I removed 23 contact lenses from a patient’s eye. I have never seen anything like it.

• Dr. Katerina Kurteeva is an ophthalmologist in Newport Beach, California, USA.
• A patient came in complaining of pain, but Kurteeva saw nothing during the initial examination.
• This is Kurteeva’s story, told to Lauren Crosby Medlicott.
• For more stories, visit Business Insider.

This say-to-say essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Katerina Kurteeva. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It had been a manic Monday at the clinic with eye emergencies occurring over the weekend, in addition to our routine appointments. Towards the end of the day, a patient in her mid-70s who wore daily contact lenses came in saying she felt she had something in her eye that she couldn’t get out.

Even though we ask seniors to come in once a year for checkups, this woman had skipped appointments and hadn’t been in two years. Good that she vision was blurryit was pain which bothered her the most.

My mind jumped at the possibilities of what it could be: a piece of broken contact lensa scratch on the cornea, infection, eyelash or makeup debris. I wouldn’t be sure until after the exam.

I checked for scratches or foreign bodies

To start, I used an anesthetic and yellow dye to identify any scratches or foreign bodies. I couldn’t see anything on the cornea on the initial exam, so I started manually pulling on the lower and upper eyelids to see if there was anything in the upper or lower fornix. These are the deep corners of the eye, like little eyelid pockets, where things sometimes get stuck.

I didn’t see much – just a bit of mucus, which might be a natural response to irritation. I was puzzled.

To further my investigation, I used an instrument called an eyelid speculum that held the upper and lower eyelids open at the same time for a longer period of time, so that I could freely use my hands to find out what was going on.

When I asked him to look down, I could see the edges of a few contacts stuck together. Pulling them out I felt I could still see more and asked my assistant to call me save deletion.

Asking the patient to look down again, I could see a huge drop of dark purple contact lenses stuck to her eye. He almost looked like a second student. I slowly started using a cotton swab to peel off the lenses one by one, like you were dealing a deck of cards. They came out in a chain, falling on its lid. There were a lot of contact lenses – I thought this might be my Guinness Book of World Records moment.

In nearly 20 years of practice, I had never seen anything like it.

The patient’s eye with most contact lenses removed.

She felt better almost immediately

The patient didn’t believe it either and asked me if I was sure of the number I was counting.

After removing the biggest drop, we scooped out a few more from the corners, rinsed her eye thoroughly with sterile distilled water, removed some of the mucus, and sent her home with anti-inflammatory drops. She said she already felt much better.

Arranging the contacts on a handkerchief, I separated each with fine-tipped forceps and counted 23 contact lenses. Some of them were yellow and some were light blue, because while the natural color of a contact lens is light blue, the stain I put in his eyes to examine had colored some of the lenses yellow .

I posted the review video, and it went viral right away. Optometrists in South America, Mexico and Europe were using the video to educate people to ensure they remove their daily contact lenses from their eyes each night. These are light and fragile lenses and should not be used for more than 24 hours.

This can be very dangerous for the patient

This patient was very lucky – she could have lost her sight, scratched her cornea or contracted an infection. I begged her to stop wearing contact lenses and give her eyes a break, but she immediately started wearing them again. I saw her a month after the exam and she was doing great, feeling much more comfortable and seeing clearly.

Although I can’t be sure how she managed to forget to remove all those lenses, it’s possible because she’s been wearing contact lenses for 30 years. When a person wears contact lenses for a long time, it can lead to desensitization of the corneal nerve endings. She wouldn’t have smelled something like 23 contact lenses that strongly. Maybe it was his age too. The elderly eyelid fornix, the least sensitive space, is much deeper and the contact lenses have been there for a while without bothering her.

I feel really lucky to have captured this on video to remind people to remove their contact lenses every night. It was a happy ending, but it could have turned sour very quickly.