Doctors have pulled a contact lens out of a Scottish woman’s eye socket that was stuck in her eyelid for nearly 30 years.

The woman, aged 42, presented to doctors at the Tayside Department of Ophthalmology in Dundee after about six months of pain, swelling and with a droopy eyelid.

She told doctors about the “pea-sized lump” on her upper left eyelid, which didn’t give her any pain in the beginning.

But as the months went on, the lump grew bigger and became painful.

She had no scarring, her vision was unaffected and there and there was no discharge coming from her eye.

Aside from some inflammation, it was a bit of a mystery.

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Her unusual situation was documented by doctors Sirjhun Patel, Lai-Ling Tan and Helen Murgatroy in a case study published by the British Medical Journal on Friday.

They published images from an MRI, which showed “well-defined ovoid nodule” lodged in her eye scocket, measuring 8mm wide.

It appeared to be a cyst, which doctors decided to surgically remove.

“An encapsulated cyst was found within the soft tissue…” they observed.

“On removal, the cyst ruptured and a hard contact lens was extracted.

“The foreign body was extremely fragile on removal and handling.”

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Of course, this sparked a discussion with the patient about how long the lens had been in there.

After consulting her mother, the Scotswoman told doctors about the blunt trauma she experienced 28 years ago as a teenager.

She’d been hit in the eye with a shuttlecock while playing a game of badminton when she was 14 years old.

She was wearing a contact lens at the time, but had assumed it had been knocked out.

Her eyelid did swell up, but it went down after she was treated by her GP.

(British Medical Journal )

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Now, her doctors believe the lens was knocked upwards, migrating to her upper eyelid after the shuttlecock hit her.

They believe her case represents the longest time between a “traumatic lens migration” and presentation of eyelid swelling.

It’s unclear what caused the swelling in her eyelid to flare up suddenly after the foreign body lay dormant for so long.