College sophomore Ryan Gregg initially thought he had something in his left eye.
Within hours, light in the dormitory hallway stabbed like a knife.
When Gregg called his parents at 3 the next morning, he said it felt as if someone had pierced his eye with a hot poker.
He learned five weeks later that his contact lens solution caused a fungal infection. By then, his vision was almost gone, his eye swollen shut and he could do little more than lie on the couch in agony.
"It just got worse and worse," said Gregg, 19, of Whitehall.
The infection forced him to leave Washington & Jefferson College, which left the school's baseball team without its star player.
Gregg is one of at least 130 people nationwide to be treated for fusarium keratitis, a rare and potentially blinding fungal infection linked to ReNu with MoistureLoc, a contact lens solution that has been yanked from store shelves worldwide.
On April 18, Gregg underwent a corneal transplant at UPMC Eye Center and is one of 37 people in the U.S. to have the surgery after using the solution.
Transplanted corneas can be rejected at any time.
"It could be good for a few months or a few years or the rest of my life. They really don't know," said Gregg, who filed a federal lawsuit in Pittsburgh last month against Bausch & Lomb, the solution's manufacturer.
Dr. Deepinder Dhaliwal, director of cornea and refractive surgery at the UPMC Eye Center in Oakland, said the center treated Gregg and 11 other area patients infected by fusarium keratitis after they used the contact lens solution.
Dhaliwal said she was able to grow the fungus in the lab from one patient's MoistureLoc solution. But she cautions people who used MoistureLoc not to panic.
"If you have it on your shelf, throw it away. Do not freak out," she said. "There's no cause for alarm. If your eyes are feeling fine, you don't have it."
Gregg's attorney, Jeff Ward, of Cohen & Grigsby, Downtown, said he plans to file a second lawsuit this week on behalf of Carla VanBuskirk, 52, of Mt. Lebanon, who was treated for the fungal infection at Allegheny General Hospital last year after using MoistureLoc.
Five AGH patients who used contact lens solutions were treated for the fungal infection in the past year, although a link to the product has not been confirmed in those cases, said Heather Holtschlag, a spokeswoman for the North Side hospital.
Bausch & Lomb pulled the product from Singapore's shelves in February after a spate of infections there.
The company did not pull it from shelves in the U.S. until April 13 -- after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an investigation. The product was pulled worldwide last week.
"I believe if Bausch & Lomb had gotten the word out in time, Ryan wouldn't have had to have this surgery," said his father, Mark Gregg. "The ophthalmologists in this country should have known about it, and they didn't. And that's Bausch & Lomb's fault."
Even in the early stages of the painful infection, Gregg, a third-baseman and left-fielder, was his college team's best hitter, batting .457, coach Jeff Mountain said.
Still, he could tell Gregg was suffering.
"On bright days, he had terrible trouble. He couldn't focus," Mountain said.
Five weeks after his transplant, Tammy Gregg said her son's eyelid is droopy and swollen, and his activities will be limited for 18 months.
Gregg and VanBuskirk initially were treated for other eye problems, including herpes infections, which they did not have. As they used the prescribed anti-viral medications, their infections worsened.
"I was in such pain," said VanBuskirk, who began having problems in February 2005, more than a year before a link between the infections and her contact lens solution was reported in the U.S. "I couldn't handle any light."
She wore sunglasses designed for cataract patients in her house and kept all the lights off.
As the pain intensified and her sight deteriorated, she no longer could drive and was forced in April 2004 to take a six-week medical leave from her job as a tax clerk for Mt. Lebanon.
The infection was cleared with medication but left permanent scarring. She said she is unable to wear contact lenses after more than 30 years and no longer is a candidate for LASEK eye surgery, which she once considered.
Additional Information:
Details
At a glanceFusarium keratitis is a fungal infection linked to Bausch & Lomb ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution, which has been pulled from store shelves worldwide.
Symptoms: redness, pain, tearing, discharge and light sensitivity. Left untreated, the infection can cause blindness and require the eye to be removed.
About 2.3 million contact lens wearers nationwide used the solution.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
