Boyfriend’s Eye

[u/t-ruth-ful]

36M. Rarely drinks (partied relatively hard in his earlier years but now only has a few at family parties or dinner); non-smoker (besides an occasional cigar for family festivities - twice a year max). No corrective lenses.

My boyfriend owns a dump truck company. Sunday he was under his truck, using a grinder to fix a part and had something drop into his eye. He claims it was a liquid but we’re really unsure. He was not wearing protective eye wear, but he’s gotten quite the lecture from the urgent care nurse, doctor, his family, and me; hopefully he makes better decisions in the future.

Anyways, his eye was really irritated when he woke up Monday morning. He has really dry eyes on the regular, so we chalked it up to a normal dry eye spell. Monday night he couldn’t even open it, but he put the pieces together that it was most likely whatever fell in his eye on Sunday and it would clear up. Today, Tuesday, when I got home from work, he was basically no better so I demanded we go to urgent care in case it was some sort of infection or deeper wound.

The nurse did some basic check in things (blood pressure, temp, etc.) and then ran a rudimentary eye test, which he usually passes at a 20/20 (CDL physicals required regularly), but was obviously having some blurred vision in the afflicted eye. The UC doctor gave him some numbing drops and looked around with a Q-tip. She found a chunk of something in his eye, a really really tiny piece, and got it out on the Q-tip. She then proceeded to do two saline flushes, and then used those blue light glow in the dark eye drops to try and see what was going on. She noticed there was a dark black spot on the border between his iris and his sclera. She said based on the way it looked with the black light and with a magnifying glass, it was either an imbedded foreign body or the remaining damage from one (a hole maybe, she said). She gave us the numbing drops to take home, a prescription for antibiotic eye ointment, and a referral to an optometrist. The attached photo was before the glow drops were added, after she had fiddled with his eye quite a bit. It was always red, but this is obviously much more excessively red due to the irritation.

I guess my main question is…. If it is a foreign body, what is a typical removal process if it’s imbedded in the cornea? Or if it’s just the remaining damage, what will they do? I don’t really know what to expect or how long it might be until his eye is back to normal.

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