@ItalianPrincess1217 / @Cooldil17: When I was fourteen a friend of mine was house-sitting, she took me into the home despite my objections – I really should have stood my ground and not gone in. That’s my own fault. Inside the home was a high intensity upright tanning bed, these are designed for very deep dark tans in short periods of time. As I was fourteen I had no experience with tanning beds, I am also extremely fair skinned. Tanning beds aren’t really something I had ever even thought about. I did not use it myself but it was turned on near me, about 20 ft away for about 15 minutes. I did not have eye protection, nor did any of the girls I was with.
They all ended up fine with tans they were happy with and continued to use the bed throughout the time they were house-sitting.
I however, only was exposed the one time. I went home that night feeling as though I had a fever, and went to sleep early at around 8PM. I woke up at 1AM with foggy vision, and my skin was red and tight. My mother took me to the emergency room where the doctor took one look at me, stated I had an allergic reaction or a sunburn and sent me home. At 4AM I woke with nearly no vision and my skin was so tight it cracked open in some places, when I spoke my cheek was so tight and burnt that it pulled my lower eyelid down, my upper eyelid was swollen and had moved over much of my eye. The damage was worst on my left side, where the tanning bed had been. I never even looked directly at it. My left eye was so damaged they had blood pooling in it from an inflamed and burst blood vessel and had become a flat red on the sclera. On top of that my eyes were bright red and felt as though sand was being poured on them. They resembled a MUCH worse version of the picture in the bottom left here.
I went back to the emergency room, where they didn’t know yet what the problem was. I was no help as I had no idea a tanning bed could do that kind of damage and none of my friends had yet had a problem that I knew of. Everything from a chemical burns to allergies was a discussion. An hour later a nurse walked into my room and said “Whoa, someone spent too much time tanning.” And it clicked. At which point the doctor said that I had severe burns and photokeratitis. He performed a basic exam and told me that due to the severity of the damage I may never see again though he was uncomfortable putting a percentage on it or giving us more information. He directed me to a specialist and sent me home with ice packs and two eye patches.
He also gave me the best sunburn advice I know of, if you have a bad burn – buy Philips Stool Softener and dab it on. It has the highest milk of magnesia content you can get and will aid healing better than anything.
The next day I went to the specialist, at this point I was entirely blind. It looked as though fog was creeping in. Dense white fog. And by that day I would open my eyes and all I saw was dim white light. No shapes, no colors, nothing. When the specialist saw me she did the one thing a doctor should never do, gasp audibly upon seeing the damage. She added the yellow drops, shined the blue light and gasped. She then showed my mother the damage.
It looked as though someone had dragged rough sandpaper across my eyes repeatedly.
She echoed the emergency care doctor’s statements. But she put my recovery at about 5% of achieving any vision back and told us that I would likely be legally blind for the remainder of my life. That most cases of this resolve themselves but in my particular case the damage was so severe she did not think it was at all possible.
There’s another huge chunk of story about my treatment and what my mother did that I credit her for bringing my vision back but this is already very long.
I had my vision back more or less in a week, though I continued to have foggy vision upon waking for about a month and it took many years for my eyes to not have morning issues, blurry vision on some days with no warning, etc.
Now, I once again have 20/20 vision with slight astigmatism. My vision before was better, so even this doesn’t feel right. But it seems to have healed, then again it was nine years ago.
And for the record @Cooldil17, don’t call bullshit. Ask for clarification. Otherwise, you’re just saying you can’t believe something is possible because of your own lack of knowledge.
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