When Whitney Fleming, a writer in Grand Rapids, Mich., woke up to find her left eye sore and irritated, she wasn’t initially worried. Fleming had been wearing soft contact lenses since her teens; she cleaned them diligently, replaced them with a fresh pair every two weeks, and never wore them to sleep.

But as the pain grew steadily worse, and none of the treatments she was prescribed seemed to work, Fleming started to panic. She couldn’t drive. Exposure to light was excruciating. The pain, which was unrelenting, radiated into her face and neck, and she eventually lost the vision in her left eye. “I was really just starting to detach from life, because I was in such a lot of pain,” she recalls.

Finally, three weeks later, a corneal specialist diagnosed Fleming with Acanthamoeba keratit

See Full Page