"My Contact Lens Scratched My Eye"

Nope. Improbable. I get a few of these a week, and I've blogged about this before, but some things bear repeating. Everyone thinks their contact scratched their eye. Now I'm not saying an abrasion is "impossible"...but it's not the contact. It's your finger. If you scratch your own eye with your finger while inserting or removing the lens, that's one thing. But if your eye just starts hurting out of the blue, it's pretty dang unlikely that it's a "scratch", no matter what the scenario. A scratch happens when your eye gets hit by something. If you didn't get hit by anything, then it's not a scratch. The end! I have all these patients who are heavy contact lens wearers and their eye starts hurting and they think it's a "scratch". And maybe someone (nurse, PCP, etc) even told them it's a scratch! But it's not. It's something else. Statistically it's MOST likely to be an "infiltrate", which is a common inflammatory condition (not "infection"). As I always say, "WHEN IN DOUBT, TAKE IT OUT", which means if you have some eye problem, any eye problem, your best bet is to remove the contact lens. A lot of people sleep in their lenses, which for most people is ok IMO if they're wearing silicone lenses. Then they'll wake up in the morning with a lens still on, and it hurts, and they'll come in and tell me their lens scratched their eye. How? How is that possible? It's not. If you're a contact lens wearer and your eye is red or painful or light sensitive, TAKE THE LENS OUT and go to the eye doctor. Not the PCP or the ER b/c they're going to tell you it's a scratch as well, and it's almost certainly not.