It’s not immediately obvious why this patient was so asymptomatic, but it may have had something to do with her “deep set eyes,” according to the BMJ report. Wearers of contact lenses know how frustrating and unsettling it can be to displace a lens. Here’s how you get a contact lens out from the top of your eye, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology: The first step is to be sure the contact lens is still on the eye. The contact lens can fall out of the eye and it may be assumed that it has merely moved under the eyelid. It is important to note also that the contact lens can only go as far as the crease in the conjunctiva under the upper eyelids and it cannot go behind your eye. To remove the lens you should first wash your hand carefully and relax the eyelid and see if you can feel the lens through the eyelid. It may help to apply some sterile saline or artificial tears to help float the contact lens out from under the eyelid.
If a corner of the lens can be visualized in a mirror you can use a finger to slide it back down over the cornea where it can be removed normally. If the lens is suspected to be under the upper eyelid, it may also help to bring the lens in to view by looking downward as far as possible. Another technique is to gently massage through the eyelid down towards the cornea or you can try to lift or “flip” the eyelid to make the lens visible. Lastly, if you cannot retrieve the lens or if the eye is bothersome, you should call and schedule an appointment to see your ophthalmologist as soon as possible. The last sentence is the critical one. If at any point you feel this is beyond your abilities, just go see your eye doctor. As this bizarre case study shows, don’t just leave it in there.
Update: As an interesting update, we heard from Dr. Kevin D Hinshaw, an eye specialist in West County, PC, who says his record for one eye is five contact lenses. So this is actually a thing that happens, but 2.
I would not say it is common, and 1. Usually these folks have relatively small corrections so their vision is not terribly affected until the ’stack’ gets fairly tall,” Hinshaw told Gizmodo. As a Gizmodo reader pointed out, the condition is actually quite rare, affecting anywhere from one in 2,ooo to one in 1.