A woman who accidentally got eyelash glue in the corner of her eye has shared her horrific story after a simple mistake left her blind.
Last year, on the Fourth of July, 26-year-old Kaitlyn Humphrey ran out of glue for her false eyelashes and decided to buy eyelash glue to apply them instead.
However, the filing wasn’t seamless for the Missouri-based mother.
“When I first used the glue, a small amount got into the corner of my eye and it started to burn,” Humphrey said.
She tried to wash the glue out of her eye, following the instructions on the back of the package, but didn’t have much luck.
“It was annoying for the rest of the day, but this was something I expected as it was a new product and it had gotten into my eye,” she said.
A few days later, her irritation still wouldn’t go away, so Humphrey decided to go to the doctor to have her eye flushed out, hoping to flush out the glue.
But after a visit to the doctor she was sent home with antibiotic eye drops as these suggested she had had an allergic reaction, but her symptoms persisted.
Last year, on the Fourth of July, 26-year-old Kaitlyn Humphrey ran out of glue for her false eyelashes and decided to buy eyelash glue to apply them instead.
She tried to wash the glue out of her eye, following the instructions on the back of the package, but didn’t have much luck.
After a few days, her irritation still wouldn’t go away, so Humphrey decided to go to the doctor to have her eye flushed out in the hopes that the glue would wash away.
“One day I would be fine and the next day I could wake up and my eye was swollen and inflamed,” Humphrey said.
‘It would be bloodshot, itchy and burning. It felt like there was an eyelash in my eye, that was the feeling,” she continued.
‘The flare-up just kept coming and going and I went to the hospital and they said the same thing and sent me home with the same products.’
Over the next eight months, Humphrey continued to fight the symptoms, but only went to the ophthalmologist when her vision became blurry and she started feeling “pressure” behind her eye in March 2024.
“The ophthalmologist looked at my eye and said they couldn’t see any pressure behind my eye and there was nothing wrong,” she said.
‘The ophthalmologist did less than the hospital. It made me feel like a hypochondriac,” Humphrey admitted.
‘It made me feel like I was experiencing something I wasn’t experiencing.’
After a visit to the first ophthalmologist, the accountant claimed that she continued to struggle with poor vision, causing her to quit her job and struggle to play with her children.
“One day I would be fine and the next day I could wake up and my eye was swollen and inflamed,” Humphrey said.
‘It would be bloodshot, itchy and burning. It felt like there was an eyelash in my eye, that was the feeling,” she continued
When she went to get a second opinion, they discovered that her cornea had almost ‘melted away’ due to the infection
But things took a dramatic turn in August when she woke up one day blind, with her eye swollen shut and unable to see anything.
“There was also so much pressure on my right eye that I couldn’t see out of it either,” she said.
‘That same day my right eye regained sight, but my left eye did not. I was in a lot of pain. The pain was terrible,” explained that her eyelid felt like sandpaper.
When she went to get a second opinion, they discovered that her cornea had almost ‘melted away’ due to the infection.
This news came as a complete shock to Humphrey, especially since the doctor told her that she was in the stage of losing her eye.
Shortly afterwards the mother underwent a corneal transplant to try to save her eye and restore her sight, but unfortunately the operation did not last.
During her four-hour eye removal surgery, a surgeon wrapped the tissue and muscles of her left eye around a marble to ensure that her prosthetic would move like a real eye in its socket.
After she had her transplant, she started having mild headaches, but they eventually became so severe that she could no longer get out of bed, which sent her back to the hospital.
Shortly afterwards the mother underwent a corneal transplant to try to save her eye and restore her sight, but unfortunately the operation did not last.
It’s now been a month since Humphrey had her surgery and is now urging others to continue pushing for professional help if you think something is wrong with your health.
‘I explained that I had had a cornea transplant and was being airlifted to another hospital. They performed a CT and found that there was a mass the size of a dime (5 cent coin) growing on my optic nerve,” she recalls.
“This was due to the infection caused by my body rejecting the transplant,” she explained.
The doctors gave her the option of then having a full eye transplant, but she was tired of being in so much pain that she decided to go ahead and have her eye removed.
“The surgeon went in and cleaned my eye, left the white part of my eye and wrapped the tissue and muscle around the marble so the marble moved around like my other eye,” she said.
It’s now been a month since Humphrey had her surgery and is now urging others to continue pushing for professional help if you think something is wrong with your health.
‘At first I was so afraid to look at my eye. I was terrified. You hear things like this happen, but you never think it will happen to you,” she said.
“I never thought using a product like that (eyelash glue) would cause this because it’s meant to go around your eye,” the accountant continued.
‘I just want to raise awareness about what I’ve been through. Those symptoms that you think are normal and those everyday symptoms can lead to very life-changing and lasting symptoms.”