Two women who accidentally sealed their eyes shut with superglue after mistaking the bottles for eye drops have shared their agonizing recoveries.
Jennifer Eversole, from Santa Rosa, picked up the bottle from her dresser, which she had put next to her drops after gluing on her daughter’s nails, and only realized the mistake when she poured some into her left eye.
The mother-of-six was rushed to the hospital, where doctors eventually pried her eye open and cleared the superglue.
Revealing the mistake online, she said: ‘Well, I’ve gone and done it. I have won the most idiot person award. I wasn’t paying attention, and now my eye is glued shut.’
‘I just feel so stupid.’
Last year, a 22-year-old woman named Lyd detailed a similar incident: she woke up in the middle of the night, reached for eye drops, and grabbed glue instead.
Jennifer Eversole of Santa Rosa, California, accidentally glued her eye shut after mistaking the bottle of nail superglue for her eye drops. She documented her experience on TikTok and said she has since made a full recovery
Ms Eversole revealed the accident on TikTok earlier this week in a video that reached 4.4 million views, saying that she realized something was wrong the moment she poured the glue into her left eye.
In a video explaining how it felt, she said: ‘Intense burning. Really bad burning, it felt hot.’
She quickly shut her eyes, which she thought kept most of the glue from getting into her eyeball, and then called an ambulance.
At the hospital, doctors put a specialist antibiotic ointment onto her eyelashes and eyelids to disintegrate the glue. The antibiotics also helped minimize the risk of infection.
They could then pry open the eyelid and check damage to her eyeball. She was able to keep it open after using numbing eye drops.
Later she was discharged but told to keep a bandage on her eye and apply ointment daily to help gradually disintegrate the remaining bits of glue trapped underneath her eyelid.
Ms Eversole said her vision was still ‘super, super blurry’ after all the glue came off.
But she revealed in a post yesterday that her eye was ‘healing nicely’. Doctors expect her vision to return to normal within days, she said.
She does not appear to have suffered any lasting damage to her eyeball, although she said she felt like the glue had scratched it at the time of the accident.
‘I am definitely more appreciative of my eyesight,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how much you need both your eyes until you can’t use one of them.’
Ms Eversole said that she was distracted and not paying attention to which bottle she grabbed, which caused her to accidentally put nail superglue in her eye
When asked how she made that mistake, Ms Eversole showed images of the two bottles and said that they looked very similar and that she wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice.
‘I was distracted talking to my daughter getting ready to pick up groceries, and I just grabbed it. They are the same size!’ she said.
It’s unclear whether she wears contact lenses, although this appears likely. In other videos, she is pictured wearing glasses.
Despite the EMTs not seeing another case like this, this issue is common enough for the glue company Super Glue Corporation to have an FAQ section on its website.
However, most cases do not have severe effects. A 2012 study in the International Journal of Ophthalmology examined people with superglue in their eyes and found no instances where permanent damage was caused.
The worst the researchers found were cases where the eye had sealed shut, and parts of glue remained in the eye.
Lyd, 22, shared on TikTok last year that she put superglue in her eye after waking up in the middle of the night and grabbing the wrong bottle. Doctors had to pry her eye open
Ms Eversole isn’t the only person to make that mistake.
Last year, 22-year-old Lyd shared on TikTok that she also glued one of her eyes shut.
In a video with 5.5 million views, Lyd said she had mistaken a superglue bottle for her eye drops.
Like Ms Eversole, she went to the hospital. Doctors first asked her to apply ointment to break down and dissolve the glue.
However, when that didn’t work, they then started picking at the glue. Eventually, doctors had to use ‘a metal tool to pry it open and finally got it to open.’
In the comments, Lyd explained that she had woken up in the middle of the night to use her eye drops and had accidentally reached for the wrong bottle.
‘Man I bet that was really eye opening,’ one user commented.
‘Didn’t see it comin,’ Lyd replied.
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