Woman Goes Blind in One Eye After Showering With Contacts On, Explains How in Viral PSA

"One year ago I went blind in one eye from showering in my contacts," Rachel Prochnow (@rachelprochnow) writes in a text overlay of a viral Instagram post, urging contact lens wearers to take them out when they're showering, swimming, or engaging in water-based activities.

Her video begins with selfie which shows her eyes are different colors, including the sclera, which is tinted red. Her clip then transitions to video of her opening her eyelids up with her fingers.

"It was the most horrible pain I've ever experienced," she says, as hopeful music plays throughout her video. Next up is a cut to her wearing hospital scrubs and a covering over her hair. She and her spouse who's standing beside her smile into the camera — another caption reveals she's posting a portion of her pre-op procedure.

The surgery she's going through is a cornea transplant, which the Mayo Clinic states is usually successful in helping patients regain their vision.

"And todays the day I finally get my cornea transplant and hopefully my vision back!"

She gives a peace sign to the lens before there's another smash cut to her sitting up in a hospital bed, a white bandage over her eye. Both she and her husband smile. "Right after the surgery! It went so well," she writes, capping off her message with a heart emoji.

Next up is the couple in their car. "Headed home from the hospital. I am so thankful," she writes as her spouse kisses the side of her head before she returns the favor.

In a caption for her Instagram post, Rachel explains what happened to her eyes.

"On July 3, 2023 I was diagnosed with Acanthamoeba kerititas, a parasite that destroys your cornea. I got it from showering in my contacts in Austin, Texas. I had been wearing contacts since I was 12 and no eye doctor I had ever been to told me to not shower, swim, or hot tub in my contacts."

The mom added that she always took precautions before touching her contacts — she'd always wash her hands and never slept with them still in her eyes. She says that she was meticulous about replacing them every single month and had been wearing them since she was 12 years old.

So how did the parasite get into her eye? Well, wearing contacts creates mico-abrasions in one's eyes. And little bits of bacteria, or microamoebas, reside in all forms of water. Normally, they wouldn't hurt your vision or be a cause of concern. But showering with your contacts on could create a pathway, like it did for Rachel, for these amoebas to wiggle their way between your contacts and inside of your eyeballs.

In order to combat the parasite and the growing infection in her eye, Rachel had to administer eye drops every single hour for three months straight. "It was the most pain I could ever imagine," she writes.

An organ donor provided the cornea, and a surgeon was able to perform the successful surgery on her eye.

She detailed more of her experience in the post: "I had to do around the clock drops every hour for three months of Chlorohexidine/PHMB. It was the most pain I could ever imagine."

She added, "I am so incredibly thankful to be through this horrific infection, and thankful for my wonderful surgeon, my family, the organ donor and their family, and God who got me through the hardest time of my life. Please spread awareness by sending this to all your friends who wear contacts."

In a follow-up video, Rachel recorded herself seven weeks post-op to give her followers an update on the progress of her surgery. The discoloration in her affected eye is completely gone. More importantly, however, she says that she "can see again" and that "almost immediately" she could "see a lot better than [she] could" prior to to the transplant.

She said that despite the success of the surgery, she's still going to experience some issues. The biggest being that the pupil in her eye wasn't "contracting" with light. This, she says, is going to be a permanent phenomena she'll have to live with, but she calls the concession "no big deal" and that she's just "so happy" that she's able to see again.

Moreover, she added that the "transplant is sticking and it's going so well."

Numerous commenters who responded to her video offered up words of encouragement. One person remarked that her eyes now share a trait with someone who is arguably one of the world's greatest artists. "Yay!! So happy to hear this! David Bowie had one permanently dilated eye and most people agreed it looks awesome!"

As it turns out, there were other people who stated their own loved ones went through similar experiences as Rachel did. "My daughter also got an eye infection by Acanthamoeba when she was wearing the dream lens. Fortunately, she just got a little scar on the eye, the doctor said they could stop the infection as soon as possible because I (mom) ran into the hospital immediately when I found it. But the doctor recommend she needs to get surgery when she got 20 or something, 'cause her eye vision is a little bit blurred."