Thin CA - who would have thought...

[HK the III Esq.]

Figured I'd post this here to show what can happen. No sympathy req'd. just totally sucked, and had some bad luck.

Most people have safety glasses in the shop, but rarely use them... I'll use mine when dremelling, but that's about it.

Late last night I was sheeting the turtle deck of my 40% edge kit. I was wicking some thin CA into the former and 1/16th sheeting when a little bled through the sheet seams and got on my hand. I pulled my hand away, which in turn, pulled the sheeting off the former with a "pop" force and flicked the thin CA I was applying... right into my left eye.
At first I thought, wow, what a close call - i almost got that in my eye (thinking it hit my eye lid). when the burning started from the CA kicking, I knew i was F***ed. I debonded the CA from my hand, washed them up and rinsed my eye out. No luck. drove myself to the emerg room and spent 3.5hrs in the hospital getting treated and having my eye flushed.
I was back today for a couple more hours of treatment and diagnosis. I have to go back for 2 more visits tomorrow and Friday to look at the eye.

I have "Chemical Burns" on the Cornea. ugh.

Here are the photos. #1 from last night when the dye was applied. The orange apparently shows where the CA burned my eye (covering about 1/3 of the surface of my eyebal)

the 2nd is after having my pupil dilated looking for retina damage and having a needle, prod, Q-tip and other crap shoved in it at visit #2... I look like Bill the Butcher from Gangs of NY in that photo.
I'm just posting this hoping that a couple people can take something from this little lesson i learned with minor permanent damage to the vision in my left eye.

[rdgood]

HK,

My son Alex(15) got hit in the eye with a golf ball. Almost a direct hit - glanced off of the eyesocket. Anyway - from what I have learned so far they can do cornea replacements and lense replacements. FWIW my son has regained all vision- very lucky! Only downside is his left eye will have a permanent dialated pupil for life. He also missing a small segment of his upper iris. Other than that you wouldn't notice a thing. It's pretty hard to mess up the back of the retina area but the forward part has more to do with periferal vision. Be sure to ask lots of questions on the anatomy. To me the eye is pretty fricken amazing. I have saftey glasses all over the shop now.

Don't mean to derail your thread -
Hope your eye heals -

Ronster

[Mithrandir]

Sorry for the mishap....

... thanks for allowing us to learn from your experiance....

Workshops should be a Mandatory Safety Glasses Zone!!

Including areas wher painting is going on as well!!

[shogunmst]

Sorry to see that.. I had something like that happen to me some years back... I've gotten a bit of CA around my eye before, it just feels like a piece of debris is in your eye, no burning or anything like that for me... but what did if for me was when I used the debond on my hands and washed just like you did... BIG MISTAKE.. I guess there was still debond residue on my hand and my eye swolle shut within 15 minutes..... FREAKING AMAZING..... Word to the wise, KEEP DEBOND AWAY FROM YOUR EYES.....
Later
Shawn

[HK the III Esq.]

	Quote: Originally Posted by rdgood
	HK, My son Alex(15) got hit in the eye with a golf ball. Almost a direct hit - glanced off of the eyesocket. Anyway - from what I have learned so far they can do cornea replacements and lense replacements. FWIW my son has regained all vision- very lucky! Only downside is his left eye will have a permanent dialated pupil for life. He also missing a small segment of his upper iris. Other than that you wouldn't notice a thing. It's pretty hard to mess up the back of the retina area but the forward part has more to do with periferal vision. Be sure to ask lots of questions on the anatomy. To me the eye is pretty fricken amazing. I have saftey glasses all over the shop now. Don't mean to derail your thread - Hope your eye heals - Ronster

Heya Ron, Not a derail at all man... I remember seeing that on the IMACNW thread. I'm really glad to hear that he's got full vision again. It's always tougher when it's a loved one - not yourself.

My vision is blurry and my light sensitivity if haywire right now... the pupil, won't lock into a size, it totally fluctuates and causes this crazy "bad 3D glasses" effect.

The bigger worry is that my left eye will no longer "track" in Sync with the right. It looks almost lazy, except that it is much more jittery at the center. You know - Like the V1 7955's, always hunting for center... Just kidding - I own a couple, they're not as bad as my eye,

[shogunmst]

You might want to try covering your left eye for 24 hrs.. may help you out. JMO though.. Good Luck!

[50%plane]

Thanks for the reminder! I probably have 6 or 7 pairs of safety glasses laying around. I never used them. That's going to change...

[3Dguy]

Ouch! That has always been one of my fears when building/fixing planes. Hope there's no long-term effects.

[ds1rc]

Hey Ronster,

Glad to hear Alex has his vision back.

Don S.

[bkdavy]

Good Story. If we think about a lot of the things we use on our planes, there are a lot of things we can do safer. The trick is convincing ourselves to think about it.

I have two other personal experiences with CA that convinced me to only use it as a last resort in very limited applications. First is my own allergic response to it that developed a few years ago. Second was a person that thought they were putting in eyedrops but mistakenly picked up a bottle of superglue.

Hope the vision returns fully. Good Luck!

Brad

[Ian]

having had thin CA in my eyes twice now i can understand how you are feeling! I was quite lucky, both times i got it direct into my eye, i kept my eye open and ran in the house and washed it out with cold water. pain was incredible, but i got it all out (apart from the glued together eyelashes!)

Not a nice thing!

[Oilsands]

Ryan, sorry to hear about what happened. But glad to hear that you have not lost the sight to the eye. Being in the industry that I am in and the job I do, I have seen some potentials for eye injuries that were saved by safety glasses. I have also seen some injuries to the eye, some that were minor and some that were major with eye loss being the worst. The best close call that was save by eye glasses was a piece of wire from a wire wheel that went partially though the lens of the glasses and stopped short of hitting the eye. I use them for many jobs around the home as well as this hobby. I also use hearing protection as well.
Take care of that eye and thanks for the reminder and sharing the story.

[RollingHarrier]

Great advise! Thanks for sharing your experience and glad everything will be OK.

[MODE 1]

Yeah I'm sorry this happened to you also ......hope it heals real soon and thanks for the heads up

[A-Track]

Dang, that has always been a fear of mine. Back when I used to wear glasses (before getting lasik) I got hit with a blob of ca right on one of my lenses. I thought thank god I had bad vision cuz it was heading right for my eyeball. I always wear eye protection now when I am working on anything.