Mom of three, 35, seals eye shut after mistaking nail glue for hay fever drops
Shortly over a month after a Michigan woman nearly lost her eye after pouring nail glue instead of eye drops, another Cambridgeshire woman made the same, agonizing mistake. Identified as Katie Bath, the 35-year-old mother of one was hit with burning pain as she applied a super-fast drying glue in her eye thinking it was hay fever drops, sealing it shut, while in the middle of watching television.
Bath's incident follows 2020's biggest hair scandal when the 'Gorilla Glue' girl managed to sleek her hair down with the powerful adhesive and needed cosmetic attention to free her hair from its grip. But Bath isn't the only woman in the UK to have mistaken the glaringly similar-looking bottles of nail glue with eye drops. With a rise in these cases since the 1980s after the popularization of nail glue, there are about 36 recorded cases of women mistakenly using glue instead of drops in their eyes.
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Luckily, Bath was able to get the proper medical attention that she needed after mistakenly gluing her eye shut while watching 'A Place in the Sun'. The Chatteris, Cambridgeshire resident absentmindedly applied the false nail adhesive in her eye around 4pm on Wednesday, June 16. Speaking to The Sun, she said: “My eye was really itchy from hay fever. So I thought I would go and put some drops in quick. I couldn’t find them in my bag. I looked on the side and there was the same bottle so I just grabbed it quick, went to the mirror to put them in, and I put the tiniest amount."
Immediately after applying the glue, Bath claims, "I thought, ‘Ooh, that burns. My eyes must be really sore’. Then I put another drop in for good measure and I thought ‘that really burns’." She then, "instantly looked at the bottle, ran to the kitchen and started rinsing. It was really painful.” Bath had plonked just two drops of Elegant Touch nail glue and that managed to quickly close her whole eye shut.
Bath then rushed to her neighbor for help, bringing her five-year-old daughter Pippa. Bath, who is also the mother of two stepchildren, was then bundled into her neighbor’s car. after which they drove her 15 miles to a minor injuries clinic in Ely. Surprisingly enough, when Bath arrived at the clinic, she was told another patient had just come in for gluing their eye shut. "The doctor said in 17 years she had never seen this happen and they had someone an hour before me who did it as well," Bath told the outlet, adding: "Unfortunately, they can’t do a lot, just put hot water on a cotton pad and rub it gently."
Speaking of the pain, Bath says: “It was really painful. Last night, it did open, and when I looked there was a lump of dried glue under my eyelid." She explained: "I had to try and work it out. Every time I looked to the right I would scratch my eye and it would be really painful. It was very much a burning sensation.”
Her eye finally got unstuck and opened five hours later around 9.30pm that day, but Bath says it was still "bloodshot, swollen and painful". Joking that the shock had given her PTSD and how she immediately tossed the nail glue bottle right away, Bath said: "I haven’t put any false nails on for months. It was just randomly on the kitchen side. Where I put my bag I thought it had fallen out and my husband had picked it up and I had moved it. It was so random it was there. I thought it was eyedrops because I had no reason to think otherwise. It’s just a plain white bottle. They look so similar. Because I was trying to watch this stupid TV program I missed it.”