A co-worker of mine is a volunteer fire fighter. This past weekend he was on duty when his fire station received a call for a minor auto accident. Upon arrival at the scene, he found one car had rear ended another at about 15 mph. The driver of the second car was complaining of severe eye pain. A common complaint when airbags go off is irritation of the eyes from the talcum powder or abrasions from the airbag itself. He opened the eyelid of the affected eye was burned and there was residue from a previously lit cigarette.
Yep, the driver was smoking a cigarette when she rear ended the other car. The airbag shoved the lit cigarette into the driver’s open eye, lit end first. She was sent to a hospital by ambulance. My co-worker hasn’t heard if there was any permanent damage. Something to think about if one smokes while driving.
In the ophthalmology department I work in, we had a case where an older woman slipped on a concrete floor and hit her face on the floor around her eye. They did a CT scan in the ER, assuming she broke the bone surrounding the eye. Nope. Spoilage for the squeamish.
She managed to somehow puncture the eyeball by falling on a smooth floor. Yeah, we were puzzled too. Just needed some stitches, fortunately.
Oh, and a coworker managed to get a papercut on her eyeball by moving a sharp-edged piece of paper near her face and moving her head the wrong way at the wrong time.
The field treatment for an eye injury is to tape/wrap a Dixie cup over the injured eye to protect it from rubbing; sometimes the unijured eye gets one also so the patient doesn’t move them around. When all wrapped up, the patient looks goofy as hell.
Any photos of a patient dressed thusly would be as embarrassing as having to explain burning your eyeball with a lit cigarette.
Major pet peeve of mine: smokers who congregate right outside the door of our office building. I got burnt on the shoulder once by a smoker who took a drag and started gesturing with his cigarette between his fingers. But the one that really pissed me off was when a woman was waving her cigarette around while talking, and if not for the grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, she would have blinded my girlfriend. My girlfriend had just slid on her sunglasses when the lit cigarette hit what would have been the center of her eye.
Stupid smoking cow didn’t even notice. She muttered “sorry” without even turning her head to see whose face she just hit, and kept on with her story, while her co-workers looked at us horrified.
My brother was prying on something in the office with a screwdriver (an electrical junction box ?) a few years ago. When it slipped it went into his eye and wedged there.
He said it hurt like hell and the office secretary wouldnt help.
They eventually got it out. It didnt puncture the eyeball though, just got wedged along the side apparently.
I get a bit woosey just thinking about it.
One lucky fella really.
He once also got knocked unconcious by a lightning strike. Only seven more left!
Admittedly, my standards for what is “ick!” about eyes has changed during my time working in this department. Finding out an eyeball is as tough as a decent piece of leather, for starters, tends to adjust your perception of them. Our own reaction was more to the pain involved with a papercut in that location (on the white of the eye, FWIW) than the actual location. And amusement that she was in the right place to get looked at by a doctor, just in case.
I think I’ve been pretty good otherwise! I think I always spoiler the “why they tell you to wear protective eyewear when paintballing” story, for instance. (I don’t think you want to know, but I suspect the outcome is better than you’d expect.)
Not me, I smoked a pipe. Fortunately, they did not have air bags then. Thinking about a lit pipe imbedded in my eyeball would probably have made me quit earlier.
I’ve seen you mention this before, and I wanted to thank you. I’m very very scared of something happening to my eyes and this reassures me that it is harder than I think. And the idea that they can be sewn up and re-filled makes me feel better.
Oh, I did this once. I was at a week-long trade show in SF, and I went out one night and got a little toooo tipsy. Tipsy to the point I was bobbing and weaving just standing still.
I somehow got back to my hotel room, and was trying to organize my stuff for the next morning. As I was pulling some paper out of my briefcase (some of those glossy flyers one accumulates at trade shows), I swayed forward, and paper met eyeball. Yeeoouch, that hurt like a bitch for a couple days.
My sister managed to get a sliver of glass from some lab equipment embedded in her eyeball. Apparently she had to keep her eye open and veeeerrrry still while the doctor tweezered it out. :o