Doctors Find 14 Worms In A Woman's Eye

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Can you imagine having worms in your eyes? Incredible but true.

This was what happened to Abby Beckley, 28, a girl from the state of Oregon who felt an itchy and tingling eye in 2016 that she dismissed as a loose eyelash.

Seeing that the discomfort in his eye continued, Beckley decided to investigate until he realized that it was something more serious.

“I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the mirror determined to remove what I had there, even if I had to remove a part of my eye,”she told NPR.

Upon reaching out and keeping his eye open, Beckley found a small material (rope-like) under his eyelid, that's when he realized it was a worm.

"It was moving on my finger," he said. “I thought, 'This is crazy! I took a worm out of my eye."

Beckley and her family looked for answers, and they found doctors and specialists who could not understand what was happening to her, since she is a healthy girl. After getting checked by the ophthalmologist, Beckley says they told him it was "just a runny nose."

"I will never forget the expression on the inside of my face when I saw a scribble over my eye."

Ultimately, officials with the Oregon Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Science School of Medicine determined Beckley had contracted Thelazia gulosa: a type of eye worm that lives in cattle and Although some species of this worm have been found in humans, Beckley's case is unique, doctors report.

How did the worms get into your eye?

In the summer of 2016, Beckley lived in a dormant rancher in southern Oregon where "there was only one cow," he said, according to NPR.

The woman described the event as a "living nightmare".

"I was like, 'What the hell is going on? I'm going to do? '”She told NPR about the terrible experience. "It is a living nightmare."

Medical parasitologist Richard Bradbury identified the worm species after reading a 90-year-old diary written in German. He detailed what had probably happened to Beckley, telling NPR that male and female worms live on the surface of a cow's eye. The worms mate and produce several tiny larvae, in this case, Beckley's eye.

In the end, doctors removed a total of 14 worms from Beckley's eye over the course of a month, according to OHSU. They ensured that the creatures would not creep into her brain or affect her sight. Now Beckley says she hopes her story can keep others from going through the same thing.