Doctor Pulls Out Deer Tick From Man’s Eyeball

An electrical worker from Kentucky, Chris Prater, recently got a deer tick removed from the eyeballs during his visit to an optometrist.

The tiny parasite managed to enter into Prater’s eye while he was cutting a tree at the Paintsville Lake in Johnson County. Though he had an itchy eye, he never thought it is because of the tiny parasite.

When the man complained about his discomfort to the safety supervisor, he thoroughly checked the eyes and found an object on his eyeball.

Since Prater had a habit of dousing himself in insect repellent before going for work to beat the bugs he encounters while on the job, he assumed that a piece of saw dust was causing the discomfort. So, he tried out everything from saline solution to wet swab and eye washing to take it out.

However, he continued to suffer from increasingly itchy eye and the safety supervisor suggested him to consult a doctor. During the diagnosis, the doctor informed him that a deer tick has made its way into the cornea.

To remove the tiny parasite from Prater’s eye, the doctor numbed his eye and took out the tick with the help of a tweezers. “Once he grabbed ahold of it and pulled it off, the tick made a, like a little popping sound when it came off of my eye,” he told WYMT News.

Prater’s experience with the tiny parasite was shared on Facebook by his safety supervisor Nathan Frisby. “Keep in mind he had sprayed down with tick repellent this morning before going out to get the tree off the wire,” he wrote. Frisby also said the tiny parasite “looked like a speck of wood” and he never “thought of it being a deer tick!”

It is worth noting that this is not the first time an optometrist is removing a live tick from an individual’s eye. In 2011, an eye doctor took out a live tick from a man’s eye, reported American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Earlier this year, a nine-year-old boy almost lost his hearing ability due to a tick that fought its way to his ear at the playground. When the doctor diagnosed the parasite, it was feeding on the blood from the boy’s eardrum tissue.

Why is it important to remove the tick?

Ticks are tiny parasites that attach themselves to a living being, like reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians, for draining their blood. Though every tick does not carry disease, there is a chance of getting infection. Ticks may also cause infestation by breeding in to the host, according to Healthline.