Woman Almost Loses Her Vision After She Mistook Nail Glue for Eye Drops and Accidentally Glued Her Eyes Shut

Trigger Warning: This story contains details that may be disturbing to some readers.

A Michigan woman could have potentially lost her eyesight after making a mistake that is sure to make your skin crawl. Yacedrah Williams accidentally applied adhesive which was meant to repair her broken fingernails to her eyes instead of drops to lubricate her contact lens. The shocking incident took place last month, on April 15, when Williams had woken up in the middle of the night as her eyes had become dry after she slept with her contact lens on. According to WXYZ, she was in a sleepy state when she reached for her purse to get her eye drops. However, Williams ended up pulling out a similar-sized bottle that contained nail glue.

It wasn't until the woman squeezed the adhesive liquid into her eye that she realized the blunder. "I was like, 'Oh my goodness!'" she recalled of the horrifying moment. "It dropped in my eye." In a state of panic, she began yelling for her husband, Derrick, to wake up and call the emergency services. "She went into a panic. I tried to keep her from panicking but then I said, 'Derrick, this is in her eye, not yours,'" he said. Williams did her best to remove the adhesive from her eyes but a considerable amount of it had already entered her eyes and glued it shut by then.

"I tried to wipe it away and it sealed my eye shut," said Williams of her struggle, per PEOPLE. "I just started throwing cold water, and I was trying to pull my eyes apart but couldn't. It was completely shut." Recalling the painful experience, she said that the glue had burned her and that she could feel the liquid solidifying over her contact lens. This created an intense itching sensation inside her eyes, according to NBC News. "My husband offered to take me [to the hospital] himself, but I told him to call 911 instead because I knew what was happening was time sensitive and thought maybe the 911 responders could help along the way," she shared.

Finally, after arriving at the hospital, doctors fortunately managed to remove the glue-encrusted contact lens from her eyes during a 2-3 hour procedure, using a saline solution. In the due course of the procedure, she did lose a few eyelashes but that was nothing compared to the relief she felt after learning that her vision was intact. As it turns out, her contact lens was the saving grace. "They said that contacts saved my vision. They kept saying, you’ll probably lose your lashes, which I did, because they had to pull on it and flip the top of my lid," explained Williams, according to Mirror.

Dr. George Williams, who leads the Department of Ophthalmology at Beaumont Hospital, told WXYZ that Williams made the right decision by using water to wash her eyes immediately after the incident. "If you ever get anything in your eye, the immediate thing to do is try to flush your eye out. Either hold your head under a faucet, get a bottle of water, hold your eye open and just flood your eye," he said. "You'll make a mess but you may save your vision. If it’s any comfort to her, she’s not the first person to make this mistake," added Dr. George Williams.

Ultimately, the traumatizing incident did teach the Michigan resident a very important lesson- "never" to keep both eye drops and nail glue bottles together in one purse again. "I don't think I'll even have nail glue anymore," she assured.

References:

https://people.com/human-interest/michigan-woman-glues-eye-shut-after-mistaking-nail-glue-bottle-for-eye-drops/

https://www.wxyz.com/news/dangerous-mishap-when-woman-glues-an-eye-shut-with-what-she-thought-were-eye-drops

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/woman-accidentally-seals-eyelids-shut-23966382

https://explore.newsner.com/woman-accidentally-mistakes-nail-glue-for-eye-drops-and-cant-open-her-eyes

Cover image source (representational): Getty Images | Photo by diego_cervo