When he needed serious medical help, the guy didn’t realize it immediately. “I took out my contact lenses and tried to see if there was anything in my eye. Since I didn’t notice anything unusual, I went to sleep,” Benjamin said, according to postimees.ee.
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However, on Tuesday morning, when he woke up, the situation had changed – a black spot appeared in his eye. Upon closer inspection by Benjamin and his family members, it turned out that a tick had attached itself to the eyeball. The young man reacted quickly and called the clinic, where he was immediately advised to go to the emergency room.
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A rare case
It is very unusual for ticks to attach to the eyeball. Murielle Ålund, a researcher at the Swedish Veterinary Institute (SVA), confirmed the rarity of this case. She told the Swedish broadcaster TV4: “I have never heard of anything like this before.”
The situation was complicated for the doctors by the fact that no similar cases had been recorded before. Benjamin recalled that when he arrived at the hospital, he sat for a long time with his face pressed against the microscope.
“The doctors even had to leave the room to come up with a plan to remove the tick,” he noted.
The doctors returned with tweezers and a string. A procedure requiring precision and creativity began: one doctor held the tick in place with tweezers, while the other tried to tie the string around the parasite’s body to safely remove it, writes “MTV Uutiset.”
“It seemed like a complicated procedure. Two people poked my eye for ten minutes. It wasn’t very painful, but it was quite strange,” the patient described the procedure.
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After successfully removing the tick, the young man was prescribed a several-day course of antibiotics to prevent eye infection.
Race before the doctor’s visit
An interesting detail is that the young man, who is actively involved in orienteering, did not rush to the hospital at first – before the procedure, he still participated in an important running competition. Before that, consulting with doctors by phone, he clarified whether running with a tick in the eye posed a great risk.
“They said everything should be completely fine. But maybe even the doctors didn’t know how to act in such a situation,” Benjamin pondered, who himself tried to find answers about this case on the internet, but unsuccessfully.
Although the competition went smoothly, the young man admitted that because of the tick in his eye, it was difficult for him to concentrate and show his best result.
But the eventful day didn’t end there. During the running competition, Benjamin injured his thumb and suspected it was broken. So after the eye doctor, he went straight to the family doctor, where an X-ray was performed. Fortunately, after an hour of waiting, it turned out to be just a sprain.
