Man Endures Months of Severe Headaches Before Doctors Discover a Sprouting Seed Embedded in His Eye

A germinated seed with a 3 mm / 1.25 cm root has left doctors astonished, not because it is from a rare species, but because of where they found it—in a 42-year-old Siberian man's eye.

The startling discovery was made by doctors in Yakutsk's Emergency Optometry Centre after the man, identified as Maxim Sleptsov, sought help after suffering persistent headaches, deteriorating vision, and eye inflammation for months, this, after a tree branch struck his face during a fishing and berry-picking trip in Abyysky district four months earlier.

Doctors, stunned by the discovery, struggled to remove the germinating seed because it had taken root in one of the eye's most sensitive parts.

'Most surprisingly, it had sprouted, and its root had actually penetrated the conjunctival tissue,' said chief physician Ivan Lutskan. The seed had developed a tiny root that penetrated the conjunctiva, the delicate covering of the white of the eye.

The sprouting seed was removed from Sleptsov's eye by ophthalmologist Elizaveta Karpova using an injection needle and local anaesthesia. 'I had never encountered a case like this in my practice before,' she said.

A Fishing Incident

Medical experts traced the origins of his condition to an innocent and otherwise fun experience in Russia's northern Abyysky district. He said he was hit in the face by a branch. Sleptsov said a branch had hit him in the face, catching his eye as it whipped across. 'My eye was itchy and painful, as if I'd bruised or scratched it. It was watering and red,' he shared before local journalists.

He was able to remove a piece of bark while rinsing out his eye, but the accident still left a small seed lodged in his eyeball's delicate tissue.

Sleptsov began experiencing painful symptoms. 'I woke in the mornings with a terrible headache,' he claimed.

His sight began to deteriorate in both eyes, a problem in his welding job. He was eventually taken to the Emergency Optometry Centre, where the discovery was made.

The species of the plant found in Sleptsov's eye was not revealed. After the surgery, he said that the headaches had disappeared. 'I was so relieved that nothing else mattered,' he shared.

Sprouting Seeds

Children have been scared off by adults that seeds will grow in their stomachs when swallowed, but this remains a common myth. There are fewer than a dozen verified medical cases of seeds germinating inside human bodies. Human conditions are typically unfit for plants to grow.

Sleptsov's bizarre eyeball growth came just two weeks after an Indian boy was reported to be the first case of an ectopic tooth growing out of an eye.

Other cases include a 75-year-old man from Massachusetts who, in 2010, accidentally inhaled a pea that lodged in his lungs. It grew into a 1.25 cm plant before being surgically removed.

In 1979, a seed entered an eight-year-old boy's eye through a corneal wound and embedded itself in the iris, causing germination in the anterior chamber before it, too, was surgically removed.

While highly unlikely, these cases in medical literature serve as cautionary tales never to take minor incidents lightly.