Michigan Woman Nearly Loses Vision After Mistaking Nail Glue for Eye Drops

Yacedrah Williams glued her eye shut when she accidentally used adhesive meant for broken fingernails instead of eye drops for her contacts.

April 23, 2021

A Michigan woman nearly lost her vision after mistaking a bottle of nail glue for eye drops, Detroit’s WXYZ reports.

The woman, Yacedrah Williams, glued her eye shut when she accidentally used a super glue meant for nails instead of the eye drops for her contact lenses. By the time she realized she’d grabbed the wrong bottle, it was too late. She made the mistake after waking up at around 1 a.m. to relieve dryness she was experiencing in her eyes.

“I was like, ‘oh my goodness,’ and it dropped in my eye and I tried to wipe it away and it sealed my eye shut,” Williams told WXYZ. “I just started throwing cold water and I was trying to pull my eyes apart, but I couldn’t. And I was just screaming for him to call 911.”

Williams was rushed to a local hospital where doctors opened her eye and removed her contact lens, according to reports.

“They said that contact saved my vision. They kept saying you’ll probably lose your lashes, which I did, because they had to pull on it and flip the top of my lid,” Williams said.

Dr. George Williams, the head of Beaumont Health’s Department of Ophthalmology, says Yacedrah Williams is not the first person to make this mistake. But she did the right thing by immediately throwing water in her eye.

“If you ever get anything in your eye, the immediate thing to do is try to flush your eye out. Either hold your head under a faucet, get a bottle of water, hold your eye open and just flood your eye. You’ll make a mess, but you may save your vision,” he said.