My fight for the eye: Why Nick's reporter, Nick, will never wear contact lenses again

Have you ever showered or swam with contact lenses? Or do you have some dirt in your eyes after playing sports? Or even manipulated your lenses with wet fingers before putting them on?

Well, be warned, because hidden in our water and our soil is a parasitic virus that can destroy your eye and make you blind.

A YouGov survey for Fight for Sight found that a large portion of contact lens wearers in the UK were putting their vision at risk due to unsafe habits, unaware that they could develop an infection such as Acanthamoeba keratitis.

56% of surveyed respondents reported wearing them longer than the recommended 12 hours a day, 54% said they swam or showered and 47% slept there. At the same time, 15% of respondents had put them in their mouth to clean or lubricate them and 2% had even shared used lenses with other people.

In the UK, about 3.5 million people wear contact lenses, and I was one. Sometimes, for vanity and sometimes, as a football player of the Sunday League, for practical reasons.

I have been wearing glasses since I was around four or five, but I never liked the way I looked at them.

Contact lenses were the obvious choice and from 2013, I used them without problem.

It was a sunny but cold Friday afternoon last January, when I first noticed something that was really not going well. My right eye had been a little dry all week, but I had just dropped it early in the morning and for lack of sleep. But it was something more.

For a few days, I used over-the-counter eye drops and set all the display settings on my phone and my computer to the lowest brightness.

But after the pain became too much, I went to the optician and it was said that I had an ulcer in the eye. I was advised to go immediately to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

Diagnostic

There, after being seen by a handful of eye doctors, I received five scratches (as vile as it sounds) from my right eye that were sent back for testing.

The doctors could not be sure what was going on before the test results were made, but they thought it might be a keratitis in Acanthamoeba (AK).

This is an infection of the cornea – the transparent window in the front of the eye – caused by a microscopic organism called Acanthamoeba, which is found in the water. Indeed, I was diagnosed a week later, but I have not really understood it yet.

After using disinfectant ophthalmic drops for three weeks, it seemed like I was healing, but in March 2018, I found myself completely blind to the right eye.

I went to work and my vision went completely into my right eye. I do not know how I managed not to break down, but I was quick to understand that I had to go back to the hospital.

Returned to the Birmingham and Midland Eye Center, doctors prescribed drops of superior strength to apply every hour, even at night.

The virus came back with a vengeance and made me practically confined to the house for six months. I could not read a newspaper page without having an unbearable pain. The sensitivity to the light was so bad that I had to keep the curtains drawn at all times. I even had to watch Eurovision with my sunglasses.

Some may be reading this, thinking, "Here again is another millennium wimp that needs to be pulled by the straps," and they would probably be right.

But to get the message across, women in an online support group who have this condition said the pain was a million times greater than childbirth. It hurts!

The spring and summer of 2018 were spent at appointments at Birmingham & Midland Eye Center, the situation worsening progressively and doctors not knowing how to fix it. While I should have been at the pub getting carried away by the euphoria of England in the semifinals of a World Cup, I was snuggled on the couch, listening to games on the radio.

Six months of nothing is not enough to drive everyone crazy. When you get to see Jeremy Kyle so much, you know who the father is before you open the envelope, you know there's a problem.

Finally, in July, my doctor tried the experimental crosslinking surgery, a procedure normally used in patients whose cornea became cone. This implies that the surgeon scrapes layers of skin on the eye, pours drops of vitamins and breath with UV light. To my great relief, this killed the virus and ended the pain.

However, others had to come. A second operation followed in September to accelerate healing after months of toxic drops and a damaging procedure.

I had an amniotic membrane transplant, which involved placing a graft on the cornea and sticking it under a rigid contact lens. In my case, however, the glue did not work, so it had to be stitched on my eyeball.

Despite the pain, the operation went well on the medical level. The problem occurred a few days later when I removed the protective devices and saw a monster looking me in the mirror.

Depression and anxiety have been a problem since, but fortunately she has healed to a point where, with glasses, she is no longer too perceptible to others. Blindness will persist until the complete corneal transplant on August 15, which will also include a cataract operation. I will owe a monumental debt of gratitude to my donor.

Working with the charity Fight for Sight to raise awareness of the danger of using contact lenses while showering or swimming has helped.

Honestly, I can say that if I had the slightest idea that it was even a distant possibility, I would never have made contacts. It is crucial that people know that this is a reality and can happen because of something as simple as taking a shower.

If I regain my sight, I will never be in contact again, and if I have the chance to go to football, I will wear glasses like the former Dutch midfielder, Edgar Davids.

I lost 18 months of my life because of something as simple as taking a shower with contacts.

Now, contact lens manufacturers need to put enough warnings on packaging so that this preventable condition will no longer destroy lives.

* For more information, visit fightforsight.org.uk