Tony Exall was on a jungle tour near West Papua, Indonesia, when his left eye began to irritate him. He was shocked to discover what was actually causing the problem
A Brit travel agent’s trip to test holiday hotspots became a ‘nightmare’ when he discovered a leech sucking on his eyeball. Tony Exall was on a jungle tour near West Papua, Indonesia, on May 22 when his left eye began to irritate him. The 58-year-old blamed it on sweat or a tiny bug but two hours later a fellow visitor spotted that he actually had a leech on his eyeball.
A horrifying photo shows Tony’s bloodshot eye with the small black bloodsucker latched to the white area called the sclera. Tony grew concerned it might wriggle its way behind his eye so ended his trip early to find medical help.
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After eight hours and trips to two hospitals a doctor extracted the leech using tweezers – despite the creature pulling on his eyeball tissue to hang on. Tony, who owns travel company Philippine Dive Holidays, was in Indonesia to test out locations for customers when he decided to head on a photography trip.
The travel agent avoided catching an infection and achieved his aim of snapping a rare king bird-of-paradise minutes before the incident. He posted the video to Facebook where users described it as ‘stuff nightmares are made of’ and like ‘something from a horror movie’.
Tony, from Oxted, Surrey, said: “I came over here to investigate different places to work with in Indonesia so I thought, while I’m here, I want to do a bit of bird snapping.
“We were waiting for the bird to turn up and I was sweating buckets. I could feel something in my eye but I just thought it was a bug. I tried to get rid of it but couldn’t so I tried to ignore it.
“There were leeches everywhere and I must have used the back of my hand to wipe the sweat so I essentially wiped it into my eye. A couple hours later we went to move on to somewhere else and one of my spotters pointed out the leech in my eye.
“My biggest concern was that it would get round the back of my eye. He tried to pull it out with his fingers. He was pinching my eyeball to get it out but the leech was fixed onto my eyeball. I tried rubbing it but I couldn’t get it out.”
Tony had trekked two hours through the jungle near Malagufuk, West Papua, to reach an area known for king bird-of-paradise sightings.
After having the leech pulled from his eye, Tony was prescribed eye drops and antibiotics to make sure he didn’t develop an infection.
Tony said: “We went to two hospitals to find someone that knew something about eyes. At first he tried to remove it and that was quite sore because a leech grabs hold of something and starts to suck the blood.
“He started to gently pull the leech which was quite sore as it was something pulling on my eyeball. “My next concern was how do you get it off my eye without leaving anything behind. You hear these stories about tropical diseases and infections and having one in your eye is not the best place to have one.
“The doctor then squirted some anaesthetic drops onto my eye, got some tweezers and pop, off it came. The tissue of my eye was being pulled. I have never had that sensation before.”
After sharing the ‘squeamish’ photos of his eye on Facebook, freaked-out users were quick to comment on his bizarre experience. One user said: “I’m not usually squeamish but that is stuff from horror movies! Hope everything is okay now.”
Another added: “Omg you need a trigger warning on this post. Sounds awful, hope you recover quickly.” A third said: “Stuff nightmares are made of.” A fourth added: “Dangerous stuff, this photography.”
