A Russian plumber has spoken out after surgeons removed a sprouting seed from his eye that caused four months of crippling headaches.
Maxim Sleptsov, 42, told Yakutia newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that the ordeal began during a trip to the remote Abyysky district, where he had planned to visit a friend, fish and pick berries. A branch whipped across his face during the excursion, and though he rinsed his eye and removed what he believed was a fragment of bark, a seed remained lodged inside.
The Yakutsk resident soon developed constant migraines that became so routine he nearly grew accustomed to them. Double vision and repeated bouts of inflammation followed, finally prompting him to seek specialized care at the Emergency Ophthalmology Centre.
Doctors there made a discovery that left them stunned. The seed had not merely sat dormant; it had sprouted, developing a tiny root that had penetrated the conjunctival tissue. The growth measured just 3 millimeters, yet it accounted for every symptom that had plagued Sleptsov since his rural trip.
Ophthalmologist Elizaveta Karpova, who performed the removal procedure using an injection needle under local anaesthetic, said she had never before encountered such a case in her practice.
“I was so relieved that nothing else mattered,” Sleptsov said afterward, now free of the headaches that had shadowed him for months.
The surgery took only minutes, and the seed left no lasting damage to his eyesight. But the experience has reshaped Sleptsov’s outlook on life in ways he did not anticipate. He has turned to religion in the aftermath, citing a biblical passage about recognizing one’s own faults before judging others.
“[God] made me understand that I should not point out other people’s sins,” he said.
Sleptsov referenced Matthew 7:3-5, the passage that asks why one notices the speck in a brother’s eye while ignoring the log in one’s own. He added that he will now “work on himself and put his own life right.”
Medical literature has documented at least one broadly comparable case. In 2020, doctors in India found a germinating rice seed beneath the upper eyelid of a 42-year-old farmer who had complained of blurred vision and redness for more than two months, according to a report in the National Library of Medicine. That case, like Sleptsov’s, involved a seed that had begun to grow after becoming trapped in ocular tissue.
Sleptsov’s case stands out for the duration of his symptoms and the specific circumstances of his injury, which he traced to a single moment of impact with vegetation in a remote region of Russia’s Sakha Republic.
The plumber has not indicated whether he plans to return to berry-picking in the district where his troubles began.