18 Contact Lens Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Eyes

You leave them in for too long

Next time you’re tempted to pass out without removing your contacts, consider this cautionary tale: Meabh McHugh-Hill, a 23-year-old college student, left her lenses on too long and they’d dried to the point of gluing themselves to her eyeballs. She then made the fatal error of hastily trying to remove them and accidentally tore the top layer of her eye away, giving herself a corneal ulcer (an abscess or sore on the eye). “When [the doctors] took a proper look, they said I had scratched an entire layer off my whole eye,” McHugh-Hill told local media. “The pain was intense. I wasn’t able to do much else besides stay in bed with the curtains drawn for the five days that followed.” Find out what would happen if you never took out your contacts.