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Safety First - A Cautionary Tale

BGKYK5

BGKYK5

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on the crapper...
I took a couple vacation days in addition to the days I got off for turkey day, and set aside the whole six days for working on my truck. Then I went and screwed it all up.

I am pretty religious about wearing eye protection (not so good about hearing and respiratory protection, but I'm getting better as I get older). My sight is the one thing I would like to loose least of all.

Wednesday I was wearing normal safety glasses w/ side protection and working on shaving the lip off my 14BFF when the 4.5" grinder threw some sparks up at my face. They hit me in the cheek and I reflexively closed my eyes - didn't feel anything so I went right on working.

Later that night my left eye really started to bother me - I didn't see anything wrong with it so I flushed it out with saline solution and went to bed. The next day it was even worse - so bad I had trouble sleeping the night of Thanksgiving (the best night of sleep for everybody else in the US). This morning I woke up to find my eye glued shut, swollen, and incredibly painful. I was able to get my eye to open after a warm shower loosened up all the gunk in my eye, but it hurt like crazy so I made an appointment to see the nurse practitioner (ER visits are too spendy with my insurance if you are not near death).

She flushed the eye out, didn't see any debris and gave me a prescription for pink eye anti-biotic drops (hmm, what am I paying for?), but recommended I visit an eye doctor.

The ophthalmologist or optometrist (I still don't know the difference) took a quick look at me and said I had a cornea full of steel. Apparently the sparks bounced off my cheek and up under my safety glasses and into my eye. He got most of them out and I'll be back in the morning for the couple remaining pieces (he told me he got better than 90% of it out already). So far it doesn't effect my vision, but that may change as it scars up (though it is unlikely). It still hurts like hell though and the eye wants to be closed all the time. From now on I will wear full safety goggles whenever the sparks are flying like that.

So far I have been very lucky. If my luck holds I'll only be out a few days of pain, six days of working on my truck (its hard to turn a wrench with no depth perception), and a couple hundred dollars in medical bills (my insurance sucks).

I am posting this as I reminder that you can't wheel if you can't see. Since all posts are worthless without pics, here are a couple crummy ones of the debris that is still in my eye after the first visit.

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Ouch...try this.
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You have a beautiful eye(s)!
Every so often I get tired of smashing fingers, skinning knuckles or burning holes in my clothes. I got fed up the other day while working on my junk so I went & bought a Tacoma. Sorry to hear about the eye.
 
Somebody should sell a full body suit of armor to protect everything - but then how would we compare scars around the campfire?
 
Just got back from the doc. He wants to see me again monday, but so far he gives me a bill of good health and the eye feels much better today.

Those dots I thought were bits of metal still stuck in my eye... they are actually divots in my cornea from where he pulled the metal out. :eek::doah::eek: Got very lucky, none of them are over my pupil.

Now I can go back to running with scissors and juggling ice picks. :D
 
lucky man that you did not hurt it perminantly. I just got doen a few weeks ago with bad amout of dirt blown up into my eye and it was all irritated and scratched up.

What stinks the worse is that you want to close your eyes but it hurt very badly.

That made me realize how often my eyes are closed. I just used a ton of eye drops because they numbed a tad kind of but just smoothed over the scratches. Took a few days to heal.

Your in my prayers man.
 
been there, done that--same senario. glasses were on, stuff comes flying off grinder and hit me in the face. eye was bothering me for about a week before i went in. (ive had stuff in my eye before and it usually just falls out in the shower.) But this one was in there good. Tiny peice was starting to rust in my eye. I tell you, it's kinda scary to have a very sharp instrument scratching at your eye to get it out---and of course you can see it all.
 
Apparently the body has an immune system reaction to steel. If you have ever had a steel splinter you know what I mean. Every day it is in there it hurts more and more and swells more and more.

If it gets infected you could loose the eye, so don't wait to see the doctor - and see an eye doc, not a regular one.

The one I went to must have been pushing 80, and I was a little worried that he'd get a case of the shakes with that sharp pointy tool in my eye, but he did a hell of a job - I hardly even felt it.

I get to take prescription eye drops every 4 hrs for a week now, but no medicinal pot, even if it is one of Kentucky's main cash crops now-a-days.:D
 
I've never had steel in my eye but i have had chemicals. Not sure of the pain that comes with getting your eyes picked at but if you have to have them washed out they just lay you down and tape your eyelid open. All the while letting a dropper drip droplets of solution into your eyes..drip...drip...drip. It is absolute hell so i always make sure to protect my eyes even though what i do for a living doesn't help anything. All the sawdust is hell on eyes as well. :(
 
I had a piece of metal in my eye this week also. I was making a new crossmember for the front end. I could have bought the crossmember from ORD for what the metal and doctors visit cost me. I only had one piece right next to my cornea, so I was lucky. I had the safety glasses on but was not wearing my grinding shield. Needless to say my wife was not happy with me. The optometrist was able to pull it out and my eye is fine now. I did have several days of goo in my eye after the incident.
 
I think I am going to get full goggles now , and maybe cover the vent holes with screening . Thanks for sharing the story brother .
 
Same thing happened to me, had to get my eye drilled out. It was not fun at all.
 
That sucks. I had a cutting wheel break and a piece hit me in the face. The only damage was about 20 mins later when I paid for the full face shield. I also wear glasses underneath. And earplugs. I am super paranoid now that I'm geting older.
 
Don't know what it was he stuck in my eye, but it wasn't a drill. The doc told me all the welders/machinists/fabricators in town come to him when they get something in thier eyes - because he does the least additional damage getting it out.
 
That sucks. I had a cutting wheel break and a piece hit me in the face. The only damage was about 20 mins later when I paid for the full face shield. I also wear glasses underneath. And earplugs. I am super paranoid now that I'm geting older.
Click to expand...

I wear earplugs at concerts and stuff, and so do most of my friends that go with me. We feel a little funny, but we can hear the next day, so that makes it more than worth it.

I got hit in the eye with melted plexiglass, last weekend. Went right under my safety glasses. I got it out before it did much, but it still wasn't fun. If you where your protective stuff and still get hurt, it's a little less frustrating because you don't kick yourself as much. You were trying to do it right.
 
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