Florida woman rushed to hospital after grave mistake with eye drops causes searing pain
A Florida woman was rushed to the hospital after making a mistake while attempting to use eye drops.
Brianne Shipley woke up at night to drop some antibiotics into her right eye to treat a bacterial infection.
But in the darkness she accidentally grabbed her nail glue bottle and poured it into the infected eye, saying it immediately caused her to scream in pain.
She said: ‘After it happened, I literally was screaming hysterically, telling my phone to call 911 and trying to wake my son up.’
Revealing the pain, she said it felt like her eye was ‘on fire’ and as though there were ‘rocks’ scraping against it.
She first ran to the sink and then to the shower to try and wash the glue from her eye, before rushing to the ER where doctors removed whole chunks using Q-tips.
At least three days on from the accident, Ms Shipley says the vision in her right eye remains ‘a little blurry’ but that she is hopeful that it will get better.
When she spoke to DailyMail.com today, she was waiting to see a doctor who would examine the damage to her eye. In other cases, people have also mistaken super glue for eye drops.
Brianne Shipley, from Florida, said she put the nail glue into her eye by accident. She is pictured above wearing a Morgan Lens, which tries to clean the eye using water to remove any chemicals or shards
She revealed the accident in a TikTok that has now wracked up more than 2million views, with many commenting saying they had done similar.
She said doctors told her when she was admitted that the accident was ‘more common’ than many believe.
The eye drop bottle is both a similar size and shape to that for nail glue, with Ms Shipley — who hadn’t used eye drops previously — keeping both by her bed.
Describing the moment she poured nail glue into her eye, she told PEOPLE: ‘After I got the notification [to treat my eye], I blindly reached over, grabbed the bottle, opened my eye with one hand and put the drops in.
‘As the drop was falling I realized the consistency of the plastic bottle felt wrong. As soon as it hit my eye, I started screaming.
‘That first 10 minutes was just huge panic — I didn’t know what was going to happen.’
She added: ‘That drive to the hospital was the worst pain — it was just burning, on fire, it felt like rocks in my eye.’
Ms Shipley also suffers from type 2 diabetes, and said that shortly before treating her eye she had woken up because of low blood sugar and eaten a sweet.
Ms Shipley accidentally picked up the bottle of eye glue in the dark when she was searching for her eye ointment. She also suffers from type 2 diabetes
Pictured above are some of the shards of glue that were removed from her eye by doctors
The above shows her eye the morning after the accident, and how it looked about a day ago. The right eye was affected
As her eye was flooded with pain, she screamed for her 17-year-old son who Googled the injury and said she should rush to the bathroom to try to wash the glue out of her eye. Doctors later said this likely minimized the damage.
Once at the ER, she received pain medications and doctors then searched the eye for any tears or abrasions due to the glue.
They also fitted a Morgan Lens, a medical device that continuously cleans the eye with water to remove any chemicals or foreign objects like glue shards.
She was discharged the next day with an ointment for her eye, and has now returned to the hospital for a check-up.
Responding to her video, one viewer said, ‘it’s so crazy how often this happens’, while a second said, ‘this happens so often I’m surprised they haven’t changed the bottles at this point’.
It was not clear which brand of nail glue she accidentally put into her eye, but health officials say online that people who do this should immediately go to the ER.
Experts say online that chemicals in the glue can irritate the eyes and be dangerous for someone’s vision. They also said that any scents in the products can cause tearing of the eyes and make them feel irritated.
The Arizona Poison Centers says: ‘For people with glue in their eyes, we always recommend going to a health-care facility. This is the best way to avoid possible eye damage.
‘While there are no documented cases of permanent eye damage from glue in the eye, various temporary problems may result from trying to remove the glue yourself.’
They also recommended keeping medications in a separate place to avoid someone accidentally using the wrong bottle.
