A man has accidentally glued his girlfriend’s eye completely shut after he mixed up her eye drops with superglue and dropped the toxic substance directly into her right eye.
Regina Amorim, aged 55, is recovering at home after her boyfriend accidentally dropped superglue into her eye in the Brazilian city of Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Brazil on Tuesday 21st September.
News site UOL reports that she kept her eye drops, which are used to treat her glaucoma, in the fridge, which is also where the couple was storing a tube of superglue.
The two plastic containers are similar in size, and as neither of them were wearing their glasses at the time, they could not tell the difference between the glue and eye drops, which have similar names in Portuguese: ‘cola’ and ‘colirio’.
At the time of the incident, Regina tilted her head back and opened her eyes wide as her boyfriend squeezed what he thought was her eye drops directly into her eye.
She said: “The moment the drops hit my eye, I felt an intense burning sensation.” She added that she thought her eye was going to “explode”.
She was taken to a local hospital, where doctors used a serum and cotton to try to alleviate her pain.
Ophthalmologist Liana Tito told UOL: “When chemical products such as superglue, or even alcohol gel, which happens quite frequently, fall in the eye region, the eyelid can be affected by chemical burns.”
She added that the burns can also affect the cornea and conjunctiva.
Regina was discharged the same day, but she said the pain made it impossible for her to sleep. She said: “I had tears running down my cheeks all night.”
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She then paid another visit to the ophthalmologist, who reopened her eye and used scissors and tweezers to try to remove the traces of superglue.
Tito explained: “The glue stuck to the cilium region can form a crust, which rubs against the cornea causing extensive lesions.”
She added: “If for some reason these lesions evolve, they cause bacterial ulcers and then become lesions with imminent risks of perforation and blindness.”
Regina is currently at home recovering from the incident.
It is not clear if she will suffer any long-term damage to her eye.
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Story By: Peter Barker, Sub-Editor: William McGee, Agency: Newsflash
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