When Kenneth Watson was 16, he thought nothing of the gnat that flew into his eye: "I don't think you can afford to be afraid of bugs in the Bible Belt," he said.
Doctors found the parasite after surgery for a hemorrhage.
But two weeks later when the Hardy, Ark., teen was getting ready for school, he knew something was terribly wrong when he couldn't see.
When he told his mother, she thought he was faking. "I had slept late and my mom thought I was skipping school," he said. "Sometimes I would come up with crazy stories, and she told me to get up and get ready."
As he walked to the bus stop, Watson waved his hand in front of his face and rubbed his eyes, but all he could see was a large dark dot in the center of his vision. "I keep thinking and thinking, I'm too young to go blind," he said. "Then I freaked out and walked home crying like a baby."
The gnat had laid an egg in Watson's right eye and over a two-week period the parasite hatched and was feeding off the retinal tissue.
"A larva or maggot had been chewing and burning into my eye," said Watson.
Today, Watson is 21 and lives in Memphis, Tenn., and his story will be told on the Animal Planet series "Monsters Inside Me," which airs Wednesday night.
