Woman goes blind in 1 eye after wearing contact lenses during lash extensions: 'Everything looked flat'

Lillie Barrett's cornea turned grey and she lost vision in her left eye. She was rushed to a local hospital where doctors said she had contracted corneal ulcer. (Representational Image).

A 22-year-old woman in London was left blinded for months after having lashes applied while wearing contact lenses, a report in Ladbible said. In November 2022, Lillie Barrett chose for £55 Russian lashes, without expecting the consequences of keeping her contacts during the medical procedure.

At the start, the woman experienced irritation and later found out that her left eye had turned red and swollen. The woman used drops from a chemist to relieve the pain, but her condition worsened further.

"Six hours after my appointment, my eye started to react. It felt like something was scratching my eye so I took my contact lenses out and put my glasses on."

"Overnight, my eye wouldn’t stop watering and I thought it was just my allergies playing up or I had contracted conjunctivitis because I had been around kids recently. I went to a chemist the next day and they said it looked like it was conjunctivitis. They gave me some eye drops and I began to use them," the woman said.

After a few days, Barrett's cornea turned grey and she lost vision in her left eye. She was rushed to a local hospital where doctors said she had contracted corneal ulcer, which the woman believed she may have contracted from the bacteria during the lash procedure.

"My eye kept watering and started swelling. They became really red. For about two days, I thought it was conjunctivitis as I had yellow bits in my eye. This then stopped coming out of my eye and became stuck on my cornea. By the second or third day, I lost all my vision."

"Everything looked flat because I couldn’t see out of this eye. My left eye made my confidence go down a lot as people were looking at me strangely. I stopped going out as much as I used to as I was really upset about it," Barrett said.

The woman said she regretted delaying her hospital visit by a few days and urged others to take quick medical advice. During the time, Barrett's eyes remained discoloured for six months and after 18 months, her left eye had not recovered fully yet.

Barrett initially refused to undergo surgery to restore her vision, but after speaking about her situation on TikTok, she learnt that others had undergone a smooth surgery to recover from the infection and was now considering undergoing the medical procedure.

Also read: Woman pretended to be blind for 15 years. One mistake gave her away