Yahoo Lifestyle 
Simple mascara mistake almost cost mum her sight
Have you ever fallen asleep with your makeup on? We doubt you will again.
A woman in Sydney almost lost her vision after failing to remove her mascara properly every day for 25 years.
Theresa Lynch visited a doctor after she began experiencing eye irritation, discharge and pain that no over-the-counter eye drops could remedy.
The 50-year-old mother-of-two says she was shocked when doctors told her she had developed solid black calcified bumps under her eyelids.
“They were embedded so deep that particles were building up on top of each other,” Theresa said.
“I was so uncomfortable. My eyelids were swollen and heavy because I left it for so long.
“When Dr Robaei pulled my eyelid back, she said: ‘oh my god. In my whole career, I have seen anything this’.”
“She could see the whites of my eyes were glassy and bloodshot,” she said.
“I was shocked, I thought I had done permanent damage to my eyelid and I would never get back to normal.”
Doctors had to put Lynch under general anaesthesia to remove the lumps, known as concentrations, during a 90-minute procedure in order to save her vision.
Theresa and Dr Dana Robaei have now released the gruesome images to lay bare the hidden danger of leaving mascara on overnight.
The American-born housekeeper never thought failing to remove her make-up on a daily basis would ever lead to such a serious health scare.
“I had fallen into a bad habit of wearing a lot of makeup and not washing it off. I should never have let it get this far,” she said.
“It’s so important to properly take your makeup off every single night. You can’t miss a single day.”
Dr Robaei, who published a study on Theresa’s injuries, said she had never seen anything like it – and she could have risked going blind.
She said the case was an important platform to raise awareness about the hidden dangers of the everyday beauty product.
“Every time Theresa was blinking these bumps were rubbing on the surface of the eye and they pose a risk to her vision,” Dr Robaei, who is Consultant Ophthalmologist at Forest Eye Surgery, said.
“If the scratch on the surface of the eye got infected, there is a risk this could be a potentially blinding but that would be rare.
“It was certainly disabling. She has suffered permanent scarring on her eyelid and the surface of her cornea.
“The symptoms are like somebody throwing a handful of sand in your eye, it’s constantly irritating.
“Not many women are treating the removal of their mascara seriously. You must be meticulous.
“This was an amazing case, I’d never seen anything like it. But this is a risk not many people are aware of.”
That settles that! We will never fall asleep with mascara on again.
With additional reporting by Caters News.
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