Jessica Greaney, an 18-year-old student of the University of Nottingham, stayed awake for one week to prevent a parasite from burrowing into her eyeball.
According to the Daily Mail, the parasite was caused by an infection in her contact lens when she left it near the sink and it was splashed with water. Exposing and washing contact lenses with tap water may produce this harmful parasite.
Greaney's eyes were red and swollen to the size of a golf ball, and she was admitted to the hospital where doctors found out that a parasite called Acanthamoeba Keratitis was feeding on her eyes.
If left untreated, the parasite could make her blind or may cause death, since it can eat its way to the spinal cord.
"I wasn't allowed to sleep properly for nearly a week. A method not dissimilar from Chinese water torture; being awake for so many hours led to me watching a shit load of films with my one good eye, including 50 shades of Grey. I had to close the laptop every time the nurse came in an attempt to prevent her from thinking I was watching some kind of weird porn from my hospital bed," she wrote in a student newspaper Tab.
She needed eye drops administered every ten minutes for seven days. The swelling lessened after a week, but she still needed 21 eye drops in a day after being discharged from the hospital until redness and swelling goes away.
