WTAF?? They GLUED MY EYE SHUT!

[BeatieBourke]

Just recovering from the sheer madness of this.

I had to reattend a minor injuries clinic this morning because the butterfly stitches holding together a deep cut to my forehead had failed and the cut had reopened.

The nurse decided it needed glueing. She put a gauze over my eye (the cut is above my left eye) and we had a chuckle about how terrible it would be if she accidentally glued my eye closed.

When she'd done, she removed the gauze and I couldn't open my eye! The glue had run down into the corner of my eye and then along the lash line, sticking my eyelids together. GLUED SHUT!!!

I had to lay there for over an hour while they soaked my eye with saline and prised apart my eyelids. Then then tried to pull all the hardened glue out of my eyelashes with a pair of tweezers. In the end I had to do this myself with my fingers while they watched. I now have very few eyelashes on my left eye.

I felt pretty awful for the nurse. She was absolutely horrified at what had happened. She was obviously panicking. I found myself reassuring her it would all be fine while she stared at my face saying "Oh god! What have I done!" repeatedly.

We got it all off and my eye is now fine. I'm not going to make a complaint. It was an awful accident. But I'm quite scared of hospitals after a nightmare a few years ago left me with PTSD. I had to go for an x ray last week and the Dr was obviously harassed and stressed. He wouldn't listen to what I was trying to tell him and I ended up having a massive panicking attack. And now this.

AIBU to feel like stepping foot in a hospital is a game of roulette with a good chance of you coming out worse off than when you went in?

I'm still completely dumbfounded.

Not much help to you OP, but if anyone else is in a similar situ USE FULL-SUGAR COKE!! It dissolves the glue.

I learned this from watching one of those 999: Emergency type programmes - a dad had mistaken gorilla glue for his kid's eyedrops!

😁
Sadly the nhs doesn't do "no blame." The nurse will be blamed. I bet she learned her lesson and wont do it again.

Give her a break OP. Do not report her please

Incompetence in a nutshell.
Yes she’s human and prone to mistakes but the woman has no common sense and shouldn’t be working in this profession. She could have really hurt you. She might have a heart of gold but she’s an absolute idiot.

Not about your eye being glued shut 😬😳 but your lashes, when my dd was learning to put false eyelashes I was the Guinepig and lost all my lashes I used caster oil think I got it from Amazon about 5er cam with a lash brush, it was amazing my lashes grew back thicker and longer

in our MIU in ED we have 2 beds and 10 chairs it’s not always feasible to have every patient lying down if the beds are occupied by other patients with broken legs. It’s not uncommon to glue with the patients head leant back or toddlers cuddled up to parent with gauze covering the eye. It’s an unfortunate occurrence which I’ve seen happen occasionally but as others have said doesn’t cause harm and wears off in a couple of days.
The nurse will feel awful and will probably be overly cautious going forward.

Absolutely top marks for your attitude nice to see someone with common sense
unfortunately shit happens perhaps not now but you will laugh about it

Op ..you sound a lovely person who can sort of see the funny side and understand accidents happen
I once glued myself to a patient in similar circumstances when i was a very junior doctor..only i had gloves on so patient was left with my glove dangling off their eyebrow...

They glue your eyes close and your mouth shut when preparing you for burial ...😧

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This is hilarious - thank you for sharing!

Er, well I didn't really have much choice did I? Short of going private (privilege much?) what should i have done? Lash my gaping head together with gaffer tape?

But sure. Going to a hospital when injured. What a massive idiot I am [off to invest my life savings in crypto] 🙄

Obviously I am not criticising you for going to a hospital when injured. What I am saying is given the uselessness of the NHS and the high level of incompetence which is just its “normal service,” the prudent patient assumes that whatever can go wrong will go wrong and plans some kind of safety strategy. The nurse’s joking about gluing your eye closed should have alerted you to the fact that this was in fact almost certain to happen, requiring you to come up with avoidance strategy on the fly. It shouldn’t be like this, I know, but in an NHS hospital it so often is.

I spent 6 weeks in two different hospitals last year and came out with PTSD for which I had to see a clinical psychologist to get myself straight!
I came to the conclusion that there were 3 types of staff in hospital;
1/Outstanding, compassionate, competent
2/ Good, trying their best
3/ Incompetent, uncaring and dangerous.
NHS needs serious reform and a total shake up. TBH I was totally shocked with the whole experience. A year after my admission I wrote a letter about my experience and the nurse that rang me said she almost cried when she read it.

OP this happened to my daughter when she was 3. It was awful. She was on my lap and the nurse was ready to glue and said this may sting, but with no time or warning for me to restrain DD just applied it. Her hand flew up and next thing glue was smeared to her eye and it dried instantly. She went catatonic. I then had to restrain her while they soaked eye open, they cut they were glueing was busted open and she then wouldn’t let them near it.

and the nurse made me feel it was my fault.

I hope you are ok, I fully sympathise as it sounds traumatic.

Ps 10 years on we now laugh about it.

Bless you & her. Accidents like this do happen & she was great to admit her fault & help you rectify they issue. Hope the eyelashes grow back fast 💗

Totally understand that PTSD about hospitals but mine is more heightened around surgery.
I used to have no fear of anything, other than spiders & gremlins (laugh all you want about gremlins because I am 44 & it is a totally irrational fear I can’t shake despite me knowing they aren’t real), then 110hr labour ended with me having an emergency c-section & contracting e-coli from that surgery broke me, literally.
I know for a fact that if I had not been as strong as I was before that ordeal started, I was 9months off joining the Navy when I found out I was pregnant, one or both of us would have died! That absolutely terrifies me 😢
Thankfully I had very little pain throughout the whole 110hrs, small blessings, & afterwards from the surgery but OMG I was, & still am, so sick & broken 12years later!
I was diagnosed with severe, chronic CFS & Fibromyalgia in August 2019 & this is not something I suffered with before those 110hrs.
Pregnancy was a breeze with barely a foot in my rib & I was strong as an ox. I was tired during pregnancy but that was to be expected & I could walk everywhere I need to go, climb hills, carry shopping etc without batting an eyelid but now I can’t.
I can’t even consider working because of how broken I am, I crawl up the stairs most days, & the thought of further surgery, ganglionic cysts on my foot from a car accident, had me freaking out so badly in the pre-op room the nurse considered sedation of some kind.
This surgery was planned for 4yrs ago & I’ve not yet had the courage to have it. Thankfully the pain is not too bad, right now, & the only issue I have is being limited as to what shoes I can wear, but as a person who feared very little & certainly didn’t fear hospitals or surgery this feeling has really thrown me because it is alien to me.

@Grrrrdarling I'm so sorry this happened to you. PTSD is awful, particularly around a thing that makes you innately vulnerable and dependent on the thing that scares you.

I too have PTSD after traumatic birth and complications. A sudden cat 1 EMCS, major haemorrhage, 2 weeks in ICU, eventually sent home with an undiagnosed bladder injury (from surgery). 2 months of no one believing me, a month of collecting urine in a bag directly from my kidney via a hole in my back, and an eventual hysterectomy at 32 and a further 12 days on HDU. Worst experience of my life.

So, having my eye glued shut felt like small cheese by comparison!

I hope you're doing OK and life has some pleasures to offer you.

@BeatieBourke OMG! You’ve been through the mill too.
Hope your body isn’t as hateful towards you as mine is these days but I can imagine the menopause at 32 wasn’t fun at all!!!

Sadly my only pleasures these days are my child, watching movies, driving to places, trying to do stuff I used to do without batting an eyelid - vacuuming, laundry, walking, moping, cooking, putting clothes away - without collapsing & everyone surviving another day 😔
What I have been left to live is not a life but I am alive so blessed for that & trying to make the best of things.
On my own, medically, as there is no cure for my disability.
Spend every day wondering which hoop DWP will demand I jump through next; to prove I’m actually too sick to work because in their eyes I am a fraud & a waste of space.

Also wondering if I’ll be able to do what I need to do that day or have to spend another in bed/laid on sofa trying to be kind to myself because it is hard.
I mourn for the person I was yet I am not dead. I live with that dead thing inside me every day. It taunts me but telling me I can do stuff then my new body tells me off for thinking I was that super woman anymore.
I would live for my daughter to have a brother or sister, I never wanted just one child, but as much as I want that I can’t as I am barely coping now. It would be unfair on us all to try that.
I am blessed to have her though.
I have PCOS & at 20 I was told I would never have or be very lucky to have children naturally due to the PCOS so as you can imagine piddling on that stick have me a result I never expected.

Hugs.
The crazy PTSD is real & it is crazier than me… lol

Why have you bumped this to leave such an unnecessary comment? The OP said she's not going to make a complaint, that she felt bad for the nurse who was mortified, and has managed to sort of laugh it off despite being scared by it. How is she precious or arrogant?