You know how annoying it is to get a piece of dirt stuck in your eye. You blink and you blink, but it just doesn't go away. But if you think that's bad, you haven't seen anything. Seriously. A select unlucky group of people have gotten everything from pencils to fish hooks to feathers stuck in their peepers. We're shuddering just thinking about it. And as it turns out, these situations are more common than you'd think.
"Anything you can think of can get into the eye and cause irritation and discomfort," says Philip R. Rizzuto, M.D., an ophthalmologist who specializes in oculofacial plastic surgery and a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
For example, in 2013, Olivia Smith, a then-20-month-old toddler in New Boston, New Hampshire, impaled her eye on a colored pencil. It entered through her right eye (and luckily avoided almost every important artery and nerve), then lodged itself in her brain. She had a small stroke as a result. Doctors were able to remove the pencil, but they expected she'd have a bit of weakness on the right side of her body.
Then there was the guy who wound up with a nail embedded in his eye after a DIY project went wrong. Jeff Aubol of Crookston, Minnesota, was using a screwdriver in November 2014 to work on a window. At one point a nail went airborne, then wedged itself into his eye. He had surgery the next day and was back on the job a few days after that.
In terms of more easily avoidable injuries, Nicola Cavanagh, a then-42-year-old from Dundee, Scotland, recently found herself with Halloween contact lenses fused onto her eyes. She and her partner managed to extract them after an hour and a half of pain she describes as "excruciating" and "absolutely horrific," but in the process she damaged her cornea.
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Unfortunately, that's not all. Here's a list of things Rizzuto has seen stuck in people's eyes throughout his career, ranging from "okay, that makes sense" to "OMG, I'm going to have nightmares tonight."
Tree bark
Nails via a nail gun
A bit of metal, catapulted through the air on a construction site
Bullets
Bullet fragments
Pencils
A piece of paper
Acid
Tire debris from a passing car
Wood that a chainsaw loosened
Tree branches
Colored contact lenses
Leaves
Feathers
Fishhooks
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All together now: ouch. So what's the first thing you should do when something gets in your eye? Actually, says Rizzuto, you should try to start by not getting anything in there to begin with. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he says. “I got a call [recently] from a gentleman who got hit with a hockey puck in his eye. He was using a glass shield, so his eye was fine even though he broke one of the bones surrounding it." If you're playing tennis, hammering some nails, mowing the lawn, or doing anything where something can fly around and hit your eye, your best bet is to wear some kind of eye protection. Rizzuto recommends goggles or a shield made of polycarbonate—a strong, clear polymer that's effective in protecting the eyes from projectile-induced injuries.
Don't have a pair of goggles on hand? Any prescription glasses made with plastic lenses are going to be shatter-proof. So while they're not as good as goggles, they're definitely better than not wearing anything to protect your eyes.
Okay, so let's say you've already got something in your eye. If it’s a small object and irritating but isn't full-on painful, you can let your body do its job. "Most times, your tears will wash things away," says Rizzuto. Try not to rub your eyes or wet them, even though that feels like the natural thing to do. "You don't want to move something around that could potentially be damaging," says Rizzuto. If you want to be extra safe and you can tell it's still in there, contact your optometrist or ophthalmologist or go to an emergency room. "If you feel like it's bad, it likely is,” he says. “I would err on the side of caution and have it examined, even if you think it really might be okay. I don't know an ophthalmologist who will look at a patient and say, 'I can't believe you're here,' but I can guarantee every one I know has looked at a patient and thought, 'Why didn't you come sooner?'"
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If you get something big in your eye, like a pencil or a piece of metal, don't yank it out in a panic. Because you're going through a trauma, your first instinct may very well be to get whatever it is out ASAP. But shifting its position could just further damage the eye. So as counter-intuitive as it may seem, leaving it in there is the best course of action. Then hightail it to a doctor so a professional can figure out the best way to remove it with minimal harm.
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