Please no one tell me how stupid I am- I've already figured that one out and learned my lesson.
So basically I work in a dna nanotechnology lab. We use UV light boxes. I've used the thing hundreds, if not thousands, of times by now. I ALWAYS wear protection (face shield, etc). I don't know how I made such a dumb dumb dumb mistake. But, I forgot to put my face shield on today. Was working over the UV light for at least a good 3-5 minutes before I thought about it and put the sheild on, kept working with the shield for another good 5 minutes at least.
It's only been about a half hour since, but my eyes (mostly my left eye, my right a little too, but not as bad) have a sharp burning pain (I never realized your eyes can hurt, but they can).
Is there anything I can do at home? should I wait and see if it gets better? I really can't afford to go to the ER, especially if they're not gonna be able to do anything and might just end up sending me to a special eye doctor. If they're going to do that, I might as well wait til Monday. is there anything I should be watching for, or anything I can do to make the pain go away?
If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.
--Carl Jung
I swear I'm not making this up, welders use it when they get an "arc burn" from the torch.
Take a big potato, wash it well in cold water, peel it, grade it on the cheese grater, lay down and put a bunch of the potato in each eye socket (with your eyes closed) and sit like that for about 20 minutes. Keep the extra potato in the fridge and you can do that every couple of hours. If it doesn't start feeling better in a day or so, call work, find out what their UV exposure plan is (they have to have one). There also may be some paperwork you need to fill out because it happened at work.
Well it breaks my heart to see you this way,
The beauty in life, where's it gone?
And somebody told me you were doing okay,
Somehow I guess they were wrong.
Thanks. I'm REALLY trying to avoid saying anything to anyone from the lab about it, because it was a VERY stupid mistake that shouldn't have been made in the first place.
I tried the potatoe, it didn't really help much. I have some percocet that I've had laying around so took one of those, that hasn't helped a whole lot yet, but it helped just enough for me to be able to drive to the store and pick up a bunch of eye drops. Maybe one of the eye drops will help. I hope so. It keeps burning way worse, my eyes are getting more and more red, I've been wearing my sunglasses inside and have my room as dark as possible cuz the light hurts my eyes, and my eyes hurt even worse if I move them around so I'm trying not to do that too much either.
If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.
--Carl Jung
Oh no no no no, not all arch weld burns, JUST the eyes when they get burned by a flash. For welding burns on the skin you treat them the same as any other thermal burn on the skin.
Well it breaks my heart to see you this way,
The beauty in life, where's it gone?
And somebody told me you were doing okay,
Somehow I guess they were wrong.
Well I ended up going to the er. The pain got so bad that I couldn't see, my aversion to light got so bad that I had to unplug everything in my room that had even the smallest light output, my eyes keep turning darker and darker shades of red, and I screamed my head off for an hour before I finally went in to the er. They at least didn't make me wait, got me back right away, gave me a bit of ativan because I was in so much pain that I wasn't letting anyone close to my eyes, once the ativan kicked in they put these WONDERFUL drops in my eyes that took away the pain almost immediately. Unfortunately they wouldn't send the drops home cuz I guess they can do damage if you use them much. They did, however, send me home with some pain killers and eye drop antibiotics. I'm gonna go take one of the pain killers now and try to get some sleep. Too bad the pain medicine they put into my eyes wore off already. That stuff was nice- I didn't even mind them staining my eyes and such after that stuff kicked in!
If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.
--Carl Jung
That would have been proparicaine - it's like the numbing stuff the dentist uses but for your eyes. It's good that you went in and got checked out. Don't forget to use your eye protection in the future!
Well it breaks my heart to see you this way,
The beauty in life, where's it gone?
And somebody told me you were doing okay,
Somehow I guess they were wrong.
Thanks guys... yes, I'm definitely making sure I've got the face shield on in the future! better yet, I'm just gonna make sure I don't work in the lab when I'm stressed out, because that seems to be when I'm most likely to make a dumb mistake like I did.
Just got back from trip #2 into the er for this. Amazingly, the pain got worse. I didn't think it could get worse, but it did. They put those nice numbing drops in my eyes again, stained them again, the dr said it was really bad, he had the nurse give me an injection of pain meds, sent me home with stronger pain meds and a stronger antibiotic ointment than what I had been given last night, and gave me these drops that dialate my eyes (which I don't like- things look funny, and the light bothers me more), but those drops also cause some muscle in your eye to relax or something, he said it's the muscle contracting that causes a lot of the pain, and I think he was right because I'm still in a bit of pain, but after those dialating drops that relax the muscle, the pain is at least tolerable.
If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.
--Carl Jung
