Lifeguard blinded and forced to quit job after horrific contact lenses mistake
A lifeguard was tragically left blinded and forced to quit her job after making a horrific contact lenses mistake.
Last June, Maureen Cronin started offering swimming lessons to young children in their private backyard pools.
However, after teaching seven kids while wearing her contact lenses in the water, the 53-year-old claims her right eye started to cause some irritation.
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"I didn't know this [that you shouldn't wear them] but I had my contacts in and I would take my goggles off and show them how to go underwater and how fun it was," she said.
Maureen continued: "My eye started to bother me pretty quickly."
Explaining the sensation, Maureen - who hails from Rockville Centre in New York, said it felt as if she had a piece of sand stuck in her eye but it wasn't until the pain became 'excruciating' that she visited an eye doctor who prescribed her eye drops.
"Within two weeks I went to an eye doctor and said I was having problems and they said it was a cornea laceration and I had a crack on my cornea and they gave me some drops to take," she recalled.
"It got worse and then I went back again. They then thought it was a herpes infection and gave me medication for this."
It was only when Maureen visited an ophthalmologist in August that she was diagnosed with acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) - a rare parasitic eye infection.
The NHS defines AK as an infection affecting the cornea caused by an organism, amoeba, usually found in bodies of water. If not treated properly, it can cause eye damage or even sight loss and is more common in people who wear contact lenses.
Explaining the pain before finally getting the diagnosis, Maureen shared: "My eye was worse and I was covering my eye with tissue paper or an eye patch.
"My eye felt itchy like I had a piece of sand or an eyelash in it and I was rubbing my eye and making it worse.
"The pain felt like something was scratching my eye from the inside."
Maureen was later hospitalised at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York for 48 days before undergoing a cornea transplant the following month.
"I was scared about surgery," she recalled. "My eyes have been a defining feature all my life, they are light blue and my dad's eyes and they are noticeable. I get compliments a lot.
"[Following surgery], the eye was sore but it was a different kind of pain. It was surgical pain and I had bandages put on my eye.
"I was on steroid eye drops for the pain and unfortunately these gave me glaucoma in my eye.
"When the doctor got the pathology reports back on the cornea he had removed, he was disappointed to see there was a high activity level of amoeba present, which is why I was still in a lot of pain."
Unfortunately, Maureen's eye rejected the transplant and she claims the steroid drops prescribed to alleviate the pain caused her to develop glaucoma.
Maureen says she is now almost completely blind in her right eye and is waiting to undergo a second cornea transplant to hopefully restore some of her vision, noting: "I am hopeful but fearful at the same time [about the next cornea transplant]. I'm afraid it won't take. It feels like it's never ending and I'm nervous."
"I'm blind now in this eye with everything so it is very upsetting, it's isolating," the New Yorker said. "I don't want to meet any new people, it gives me anxiety and I worry about what people think when they see my eye.
"I now have a fear of being near any kind of water. I shower with my goggles on."
She added: "My eye is cloudy because of the cataract and the pupil is large. It's off putting because the pupil is so big and it looks cloudy."
Following her AK diagnosis, Maureen hopes to raise awareness about the dangers of wearing contact lenses in the pool as she claims she was never told not to.
She explained: "AK is not well known and it is often misdiagnosed. I would say anyone who wears contact lenses shouldn't wear them near any body of water. Don't even wear them when it rains.
"Secondly, if the first medication doesn't work keep pushing for a diagnosis and go and see an ophthalmologist straight away.
"If you treat it early, you can kill the parasite and you don't have to go through the hospital and surgery process.
"I was not aware at all, I was never told by my optician to never wear them in water."
Rhiannon Ingle