A California doctor has taken to Instagram to warn patients not to wear their contact lenses overnight.
In a painful video, Ophthalmologist Dr. Katerina Kurteeva demonstrates the dangers of leaving contacts in by pulling a whopping 23 out of one patient's eye.
The excruciating clip clearly did the job of shocking viewers. It quickly went viral and has since been watched over 2.9 million times.
"A rare occasion when someone 'forgot' to remove contact lenses at night and kept on putting a new one in every morning," Dr. Kurteeva captioned the video, adding: "23 days in a row!!! I got to deliver the contact lens bunch yesterday in my clinic."
Watch the video here:In the video, the Ophthalmologist can be seen pulling back her patient's eyelid and peering inside. A wad of contact lenses can be seen stuck beneath the upper eyelid and - as Dr. Kurteeva begins pulling them out - she is shocked to find just how many lenses are up there.
She added overlay text cautioning viewers: "Don't sleep in your contact lenses!!!"
In a follow-up post, Dr. Kurteeva repeated her warning.
"Over a million views, glad to have an opportunity to educate the public about contact lens hygiene wear," she wrote.
"I have carefully separated all the contact lenses and counted total of 23. I had to use very fine surgical instrument a jeweler forceps to separate contact lenses," she continued, adding: "They were essentially glued together after sitting under the eyelid for a month."
In an interview with Insider, the doctor recalled the moment she first looked into the patient's eye.
"My mind jumped to the possibilities of what it could be: a piece of broken contact lens, a scratch on the cornea, an infection, an eyelash, or debris from makeup. I’d only know for sure once I did the examination," she told the outlet.
"I could see a huge, dark-purple blob of contact lenses stuck to her eye. It almost looked like a second pupil. I gently started using a Q-tip to peel the lenses apart one by one, like you would deal a deck of cards," Dr. Kurteeva continued.
She went on to say that so many lenses came out, she thought she might have struck a world record. "They were coming out in a chain, drooping down her lid. There were a lot of contact lenses — I thought this could be my Guinness Book of World Record moment," she said.
