Tap water may seem very harmless to many of us, but a woman in New Mexico had a different experience.

Kyra Smith, a woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said that her left eye went completely blind after the tap water she used to clean her contact lens left her with an infection called acanthamoeba keratitis, which halted her eyesight. For six years, Smith had been an avid user of contact lenses, and it was not out of the ordinary for her to reuse old lenses and wash them in the contact solution each night, but something went terribly wrong this time.

 

The 25-year-old said that on the fateful day, she had put her contacts in to go to work but noticed that there was a different sensation this time around.

“I had put my contacts in to go to work and felt a bursting sensation in my left eye but didn’t think too much of it because it wasn’t painful, it was just kind of there,” said Smith.

Smith said that what started out something seemingly not a big deal later became a problem.’When I got back home, I took out my contact lenses, and my eye was noticeably red, but it wasn’t hurting or anything at that point. The next day I woke up, and my eye was redder, and by that night, it was starting to hurt more, and that’s when I started to become worried,’ said Smith.

According to Smith, a dental office worker, she went to the eye doctor the next day, and although she was given eyedrops, that didn’t help.

 “I went back to the eye doctor, and he was looking at my eye through a microscope, and his exact words were “what the hell is that?” and that just really scared me,” said Smith.

@abishnaj

Do NOT wash your contact lenses with tap water ‼️❌ Acanthamoeba is an organism that can be found in tap water and it’s highly resilient. Symptoms include foreign body sensation, SEVER PAIN, blurry vision & redness! ! #eyehealth #futureeyedoc #optometry #school

♬ original sound – Gavin Dees

According to eye doctors, the tap water that Smith used may have caused bacteria to eat away at her cornea. During this time, doctors placed her on strong medication, including antibiotics and anti-fungus medicine, to combat the infection, to no avail. According to Smith, she is still blind in her left eye after a failed cornea transplant. The situation has adversely affected her life, forcing her to leave her job and become largely dependent on her family. She hopes to undergo a second cornea transplant that will restore her eyesight.

Let this be a warning to us all! Wash your hands and only use contact solution to clean your contacts.