You know what we don’t talk about enough? The fact your eyelids normally seem so weak – I mean you blink constantly and you don’t even feel the flutter – but when eye drops are involved, it’s suddenly near impossible to use your much stronger fingers to pry them open as an unknown substance threatens to flood their being.
It turns out, that’s for good reason. If your eyelids just let any old thing in, you could end up with superglue in your eye like this guy did.
A man picked up a tube which looked dangerously similar to eye drops and the rapid-acting glue quickly cemented his eyelids together, leaving him in agony.
The man turned up to a hospital in England in 2010 and the glue was removed using fine forceps with a slit lamp for magnification, according to The British Medical Journal which published an anthology of horrific medical instances this week to ensure you never sleep again.
For what it’s worth, doctors said it would have been way worse had the man not attempted to wash his eyes out with water immediately so… there’s always that.
They look identical?!
Even scarier is that this incidence was common when superglue was repackaged to those handy little ophthalmic style dropper bottles we’ve come to know and love of eye drops in 1982.
“This case report highlights the continuing problem of cyanoacrylate eye injuries and serves as a reminder to healthcare professionals to report such incidents to manufacturers and regulatory bodies, on behalf of their patients, to promote the introduction of universal safety mechanisms on all household chemical containers,” the report said.
The lesson here? Doesn’t matter how severe your hayfever allergies get, always check that you’re not about to accidentally glue your eyelids shut.
