Can a Bug Really Eat Your Eye If You Don’t Change Disposable Contacts?

My Facebook page has been blowing up with a nasty-looking picture of a Taiwanese chick who supposedly didn't take out her disposable contact lenses for six months, and it left her blind after a bug actually ate her eyeballs. Is it a hoax? 

There is just so much B.S. (for lack of better terms) on the internet today, so you have trouble knowing what you can and cannot believe. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to find the real truth.

I must say that this story from Taiwan and the picture that went with it seemed pretty unbelievable, but after looking into it, it seems as though scientists have been warning people who don't clean their lenses properly that they are at the mercy of a tap water-dwelling bug that can gnaw through eyeballs and cause blindness for a couple years now.

Although, I cannot say for sure that the story from Taiwan is real, I can say that the Acanthamoeba parasite can be found in tap water, rivers, ponds and lakes can also be found in showers and swimming pools, and feeds on bacteria and corneal tissue, sticks to contact lenses and burrows it way through the eye's cornea, often causing acute pain.

Experts say that that people can protect themselves from the bug by keeping their lenses and cases clean and by changing their cases regularly.