Warning: This article contains graphic content which some readers may find distressing
A young woman who was left blind in one eye after she thought she simply had a grain of sand stuck in it – but the true issue was much more disturbing.
Brooklyn McCasland revealed she was left in ‘constant pain’ after enjoying a day at the beach in Alabama, US, with her friends back in August, but presumed she might have just got some debris trapped between her lashes.
However, the 23-year-old later discovered that something much more concerning was going on in her right eye, despite her optician initially informing her it was just ‘a common infection‘.
Brooklyn was not prepared for what was actually wrong with her eye (Kennedy News and Media)
She has since been forced to quit her job as a barista and now has to ‘keep her eye shut all day’ to ease some of her agony after doctors realised she had contracted acanthamoeba keratitis, which is just as gruesome as it sounds.
What is Acanthamoeba Keratitis (AK)?
Acanthamoeba keratitis is a rare, vision-threatening infection which is caused by microscopic organism known as scanthamoeba.
When this flesh-eating parasite gets into the eyes, it begins eating the tissue.
The parasite is commonly found in water which hasn’t been ‘distilled or boiled’ (which can be anything from lakes to tap water) and often causes infection when a contact lens comes into contact with the water.
The serious condition can lead to devastating side effects, such as severe pain and vision loss, as Brooklyn has been dealing with.
Research from Moorfield Eye Hospital states that while scanthamoeba doesn’t generally cause harm to humans, it can cause a serious infection when exposed to the cornea.
Symptoms often start with an itching sensation in the eye before developing into eye pain, redness and blurred vision.
(Kennedy News and Media)
How did Brooklyn get AK?
As we mentioned, AK most commonly affects those who wear contact lenses to correct their vision – and that’s exactly what happened to Brooklyn.
She believes that she picked up the parasite when she was ‘swimming at the beach’ while wearing contacts, which as most people will know, is considered a cardinal sin by optometrists.
The 23-year-old initially thought her discomfort was due to a grain of sand being stuck in her eye, until she ended up dealing with the ‘worst pain she has ever experienced’.
“I thought I had something in my eye, just a piece of sand or something,” Brooklyn said. “I kept having people look in my eye to see if they could see anything, but nobody could.
“Then I started to get more pain. That’s when I went to my eye doctor. It kind of felt like glass was in your eye,” she continued.
“Sometimes, if I shut my eye it would feel a little bit better, but sometimes it would feel worse. It was just constant pain.
“I started wearing [contact lenses] when I was seven. I wore them everywhere: to the pool, showered in my contacts and swam in my contacts.
“I even washed my contact case with tap water to clean it out. Now I know you’re not supposed to do it, but I’ve done that for forever.”
(Kennedy News and Media)
What happened when she sought help?
Brooklyn visited her optician, who reckoned she was just suffering from a ‘common infection’, so prescribed her antibiotic drops.
But the medicine did nothing to help the former barista, and according to her, her condition simply kept ‘getting worse’, resulting in her having to take a month off of work.
While being treated with a trio of eye drops – one which was antibiotic, another steroid, and a third for pain – the 23-year-old explained she was still searching for ‘more answers’, but things suddenly got even worse.
“I came back for one of my appointments and I was in really, really bad pain and she [the optician] said I had an abrasion on my eye,” the US woman explained.
“I had to wear a patch over my eye. I couldn’t put any of my drops in for two days.”
Although the abrasion had apparently healed, the infection had not – and within a matter of days, Brooklyn says she went ‘completely blind in her right eye’.
“She said it should go away, but it never did,” Brooklyn said. “I’m pretty much permanently blind in my right eye now. It was very scary.
“My depth perception – when I pick up things or try to open doors – is off, so that’s been hard to get used to.
“Being told ‘not to worry about it’ and that my vision ‘will come back’, then being told later that I wouldn’t get my eyesight back is pretty upsetting.
“I’ve got to learn how to deal with it now. It’s a big life change.”
(Kennedy News and Media)
Brooklyn’s AK diagnosis
Despite being left in excruciating pain for more than a month, Brooklyn was only diagnosed with AK after she was referred to a cornea specialist who was situated four hours away from Alabama.
But she was simply happy that she was finally getting to the bottom of it after a ‘frustrating’ few weeks and underwent scans of her blinkers so that the expert could find the source of the problem.
“I got a phone call and they said they’d got my results back,” Brooklyn said. “He said that I did have AK.
“It was a shock, but also a relief to have everything answered. For so long, being misdiagnosed and not knowing what it is and it getting worse and being in pain.”
The former waitress is now awaiting a $5,000 (£3,850) cornea transplant to hopefully restore her sight after her infection heals, while she has also been prescribed $62,000 (£47,756) of medication – which she hopes will be covered by her insurance.
To help with the mounting costs, her friend Jordan Yoder has launched a GoFundMe page to help raise $10,000 which will be put towards Brooklyn’s treatment and her expenses while she unable to work.
The 23-year-old has been told it could take up to a year for her to fully heal from AK, and only then can surgeons decide whether she is a good candidate for a cornea transplant.
Her ‘road to recovery’
Looking to the future, Brooklyn is hoping that things will get easier from here on out and she’s got her fingers crossed that her right eye will have it’s vision restored.
“It can take a year for the cornea transplant to heal, so I’ve still got a pretty long road of recovery,” the 23-year-old said.
“In my situation I have to keep my eye shut all day and I can’t work at all.”
(Kennedy News and Media)
She explained she is also relying on her friend’s fundraising efforts to pay her bills and purchase groceries, as she has been left suffering financially due to her sight problems.
“Not being able to see is really, really hard,” Brooklyn said. “I definitely took it for granted. Just day-to-day doing stuff. Now I don’t have eyesight, I’d do anything to get it back. It’d be life-changing, for sure.”
The contact lens wearer wants to spread awareness of her experience and encourage people to be safe as ‘anybody can get it’.
Brooklyn said: “It’s weird because whenever I went to the doctor long before they had found out I had AK my doctor had said ‘do you shower in your contacts’ and I said ‘yes’.
“He said ‘yeah, some people get away with it. It’s not really a big deal’. Kind of making it seem like everybody does it and they probably don’t even tell people not to do it because so many people can get away with it.
“That upset me, especially after finding out I did have it.
“If I could have avoided all this pain and all this I’ve gone through and still had to go through by not showering in my contacts or not swimming in my contacts, then I wouldn’t have done it.
“I think that’s something that people don’t really realise that yes, some people get away with it but I’m someone who has worn contacts since I was seven years old and have never thought that i could get something like this and then it happened to me.
“Just because it’s a rare condition, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you.
“The numbers are actually going up. So people need to be careful and understand that anybody can get it.”
Hindsight is 20/20, so they say.
