Doctors recently found 27 contact lenses in a patient’s eye while they were prepping her for surgery.

In a write-up in the British Medical Journal, the authors said the 17 of the lenses were stuck together in a “bluish . . . hard mass” and were “bound together by mucus.” Ten more were found by the surgeon with the help of a microscope.

The patient was 67 years old and had been wearing contact lenses for 35 years.

“She was quite shocked,” Rupal Morjaria, a specialist trainee ophthalmologist who worked with the patient and is one of the authors of the BMJ piece, told Optometry Today. “When she was seen two weeks after I removed the lenses she said her eyes felt a lot more comfortable.”

The paper says the patient had “deep set eyes” which might explain how the “unusually large” number of contacts could have been stuck. But Morjaria added that “none of us have ever seen this before.”

“It was such a large mass . . . We were really surprised that the patient didn’t notice it because it would cause quite a lot of irritation while it was sitting there.”

Get our Health Newsletter. Sign up to receive the latest health and science news, plus answers to wellness questions and expert tips. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Now Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.berenson@time.com.