The Mirror<\/a>, and she was referred to a hospital after visiting her GP.<\/p>\nInitially, Ms Marsden was given eye drops to manage what doctors believed was an ulcer.<\/p>\n
However, in the following days, her pain intensified and Ms Marsden lost vision from her eye.<\/p>\n
A week after the initial wheelbarrow dive, Ms Marsden was diagnosed with a rare eye infection caused by a burrowing parasite in her cornea.<\/p>\n
Acanthamoeba keratitis is caused by a microscopic organism that can often be found in tap water, swimming pools, and other bodies of water.<\/p>\n
At least 90 per cent of cases are in contact lens wearers.<\/p>\n
Ms Marsden was also told she had a severe fungal infection of the cornea, fusarium keratitis, as well as ulcers on her cornea.<\/p>\n
Doctors said they believed she would have contracted the infections by not removing her contacts while washing her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy eye was excruciatingly painful and red. When I woke up the next morning, any time light hit my eye the pain was so severe I couldn\u2019t open my eyes,\u201d Ms Marsden said.<\/p>\n
After the parasite had \u201ceaten through\u201d her cornea, her eyelids were sewn shut and she was prescribed hourly eye drops.<\/p>\n
The prospect of losing sight in her eye was terrifying for the mother of three.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty heartbreaking to think I might never see out of that eye again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It is likely Ms Marsden will require a cornea transplant in the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s excruciatingly painful and everything just stops, your life stops. I\u2019ve had three kids and giving birth is a dream compared to this pain,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt eats through your eye and cornea and all your nerves. The speed it ate at the doctors couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Marsden is urging other contact lens wearers to be more cautious.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t think about the knock-on effect just by not taking your contact lenses out in the shower or to swim in, or to wash your face in my case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go to the opticians they do tell you don\u2019t swim or shower in your contact lenses because you might get an infection and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still wear my contact lenses in my left eye because it isn\u2019t the contact lens that did this but it was the wearer (me) not having the knowledge of how to look after them properly and what not to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be careful with your eyes, until you\u2019ve been through this or know someone you are quite blas\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lancashire woman\u2019s recovery is ongoing, more than four months since the wheelbarrow incident.<\/p>\n
She is required to visit the hospital weekly and had six doses of eye drops every two hours.<\/p>\n
But Ms Marsden acknowledges that it certainly could be worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no choice but to get on with it, you can\u2019t sit there wallowing in self-pity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bad situation but I\u2019m still here. I can walk, I can see with one eye and I can still hear. It will get better over time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother of three has had to have her eye sewn shut after her eye was eaten by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40,5429,1720],"class_list":["post-802947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}