A British travel agent has revealed his holiday horror of a leech attaching itself to his eyeball. during a trip to Indonesia. Tony Exall, 58, from Oxted, Surrey was exploring jungle terrain near West Papua, Indonesia, on May 22 when he started feeling irritation in his left eye. Dismissing it as sweat or a minor insect at first, Tony was later shocked to find out from another tourist that he had acquired an unwanted guest – a leech on his sclera, the white part of the eye. A grim image shows Tony’s plight, with the blood-sucking critter clinging onto his inflamed and bloodshot eye.
The situation took a turn for the worse when he became anxious about the possibility of the leech moving behind his eye, prompting him to hastily seek medical assistance. After a gruelling six-hour venture and visiting two hospitals, a doctor finally managed to remove the stubborn leech with tweezers, despite the creature tenaciously clutching onto his eyeball tissue. Tony, the proprietor of Philippine Dive Holidays, was in Indonesia vetting prospective destinations for his clients and ventured on a photography excursion. Despite the ordeal, he evaded any infections and succeeded in capturing an elusive king bird-of-paradise just prior to the unpleasant experience.
He shared a video of the incident on Facebook, eliciting reactions from users who found it ‘stuff nightmares are made of’ and akin to ‘something from a horror movie’. Reflecting on his dreadful encounter, Tony commented: “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.”
He added: “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.”
Describing the harrowing incident, he continued: “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.”
Tony added: “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.”
After embarking on a two-hour trek through the West Papua jungle to observe the king bird-of-paradise, Tony endured the nightmarish experience of having a leech removed from his eye, SurreyLive reported. Post-extraction, he followed medical advice by using eye drops and antibiotics to prevent infection.
Tony explained the frightful removal process: “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 continued: “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.”
Tony added: “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.”
When he revealed the gruesome pictures of his eye on Facebook, fellow users were swift in voicing their reactions to the startling sequence of events. One person stated: “I’m not usually squeamish but that is stuff from horror movies! Hope everything is okay now.”
Another observer chimed in with: “Omg you need a trigger warning on this post. Sounds awful, hope you recover quickly.”
A third individual reacted with: “Stuff nightmares are made of.”
Someone else also joined the discussion by stating: “Dangerous stuff, this photography.”