For about six weeks, a 39-year-old woman in Brooklyn, New York, felt like something was stuck in her eyes, and they would not stop watering. By the time she reached an ophthalmology clinic, her upper eyelids had flipped inside out on their own and stayed that way.
The clue to what was happening came from somewhere other than her eyes. According to Ars Technica's account of the case, she told doctors she snored and felt tired during the day. Her diagnosis, reported Feb. 5, 2026, in the New England Journal of Medicine, was floppy eyelid syndrome, an eye condition so closely linked to obstructive sleep apnea that eye doctors are urged to send patients for sleep evaluations.
