Doctors Find Seed Growing Inside a Man’s Eye
An itchy eye turned into something far stranger for a Siberian man. After months of debilitating headaches and double vision, doctors reportedly discovered a seed that had sprouted inside his eye.
The patient, 42-year-old Maxim Sleptsov, believes it started when a branch struck him in the face. He rinsed his eye and removed a small piece of bark. At the time, he thought he had dealt with the problem.
But according to Not the Bee, citing reporting from The Sun and a local newspaper, a small seed remained lodged in his eye. It did not simply sit there. It germinated and took root in the tissue.
Sleptsov described the early discomfort this way:
‘My eye was itchy and painful, as if I’d bruised or scratched it. It was watering and red.’
That was the beginning of an ordeal that eventually brought him to medical attention. The headaches and double vision were more than a passing irritation, and the discovery gave doctors an unusual explanation for what had been happening.
When surgeons removed the sprouted seed, they reportedly found that its roots had anchored themselves nearly an inch deep. Chief physician Ivan Lutskan described the finding:
‘Most surprisingly, it had sprouted, and its root had actually penetrated the conjunctival tissue.’
The distinction matters here: doctors were not just removing a loose piece of plant material left behind by the branch. According to the account, they were removing a seed that had begun growing and had penetrated the eye tissue.
Sleptsov’s explanation points back to that encounter with the branch, though the report presents it as his belief about how the seed got there.
Fortunately, the story ends with improvement rather than another grim discovery. After surgeons removed the plant, his headaches disappeared, and his vision has been improving. What he initially thought was over after a rinse and the removal of some bark finally received the treatment it needed.