WEST PALM BEACH (Web Desk) – A Florida woman was temporarily blinded in one eye after her friend accidentally handed her a bottle of glue instead of her eye drops.
The freak accident occurred last week, when Katherine Gaydos, 28, and her friend were clearing dry leaves at her West Palm Beach property, the Oddity Central reported.
They were using a leaf blower when a small piece of debris got into Katherine’s eye. She then asked her friend to hand her a bottle of Visine from her handbag, but the woman mistakenly reached for fingernail glue instead.
Katherine said she realised the error as soon as squeezed a drop of glue into her eye. The sticky substance made her eye burn and she knew something was terribly wrong.
“As soon as I felt it burn, I closed my eye and screamed, called 911,” she said. And although she got to the doctor’s as fast as she could, the nightmare had just started. She was told that she’d need surgery and could lose her eyesight permanently.
The doctor was able to temporarily pry her eye open and apply anesthetic to her eyelids. A few news reports suggested that she didn’t have money to pay for the complete treatment right away, but later updates confirmed that as of last Thursday, her eyes have been ‘unstuck’.
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As bizarre as Katherine’s case seems, eye doctors say that people mistake glue for eye drops all the time. Dr Pankaj Gupta, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, told ABC News that he often sees patients who’ve accidentally glued their eyes shut. He explained that the treatment is mostly a simple one.
“The first thing I think everyone needs to know is don’t panic,” he said. “The eye cells will slough off and eventually loosen the grip of superglue. There is not a single thing that is permanent that will not slough off on its own. In time it will go away.”
So he said that people with glue in their eyes should see a doctor immediately, but not worry about losing their eyesight.
