Eye safety reminder

I spent most of last week in the hospital (first time as a hospital patient ever). I'll be fine. It was just a random thing - a deep neck lymph node infection with partial obstruction requiring incision and drainage and massive antibiotics. Thanks for your concern. Anyhow, I had to share a room with a fellow patient for ~20 hours who suffered a gruesome injury. He lost an eye. He was still whacked out of his skull on Percosets and in severe denial, but he volunteered to me what happened. He's a successful horse breeder and trainer and also runs a small engine repair business on his ranch. In wrapping up a job, he was doing some polishing. He took off his safety glasses, inspected his work and went to give it one last pass when his buffing pad (chucked in an air die grinder) blew apart. I overheard the doctor later. Apparently, most of it hit him right at the top of the cheekbone and traveled into and through his eyeball tearing it into multiple pieces and doing massive damage to his socket and both sides of both eyelids. The eye surgeon said that short of shotgun blasts that just vaporize everything, it was the worst single eye injury he's seen in 23 years as a surgeon. Just being a short term roommate with this guy left an impression. I'm always very cautious with my die grinders, but I have to admit, with lesser tools, I've done the occasional final burr removal and the like at slow speed by positioning myself outside of the plane of rotation rather than putting the safety glasses back on. No more. Oh, and holy crap! If you're going to spin something at 20K+ RPM, protect yourself, everybody! Don't be that guy.

That sucks big time. I hope he recovers well.

Hope you're doin good too.

Someone one here took a piece of fish-mouthed tubing to the face not that long ago...

I'm buying a full face shield tomorrow.

Yeah, the difference between replacing a scratched eye shield and losing an eye is pretty massive.

That's just horrible.

Protect your eyes, folks. They can't be replaced.

I'm always impressed with the Saturday morning mechanics on Speed et al that run lathes, grind etc. with no eye protection. I always want to write the show and bitch but don't.

Bad role modeling.

Dan the Safety Nazi

I caught a the end of a cotter key about a quarter inch above my eye while finishing the installation of an elevator once. Bled a bit and scared the hell out of me. Pretty much any other part if the body can be sewn up or reset but your eyes and ear drums are permanent damage. I've always worn my ppe since then.

Hope your roommate recovers soon injuries like that are tough on you.

Thanks for the reminder. I don't wear eye protection often enough.

safety glasses are cheap.

I need to buy a pair.

I caught a chunk of metal in my eye while drilling an overhead light a few months ago... Thankfully I am marrying an Eye Doctor... Still had to freeze my eye and pull the metal out under a micoscope, not fun.

Yea, eye safety is no joke. Twice now at work I've been lucky (or stupid). The first time I had lifted my glasses to rub my eyes or something and I got a little splash of hot sodium hydroxide (caustic acid) solution in my eye- spent some time getting acquainted with the emergency eyewash station. The second time I was fixing a pallet and hit a nail with a BFH- the nail was not pleased, and ricocheted directly into the lens of my glasses. If I hadn't been wearing them then, I would've been blind in one eye.

Also got coolant in one eye whilst changing a radiator. Come to think of it, it's amazing I still have five sense and not four.

After just a bunch of rust crap in my eye, I'm convinced.

I had moved my big 3/4 HP Baldor buffer out of the garage to buff all the brass parts for the front door of our old 1948 house. There's obviously better light outside, and the buffer makes a huge mess when doing big jobs As always, I wore a full-face shield.

I'd finished everything and was about to shoot it all with Nyalac to protect the shine. I noticed one little less-than-perfect area on the exterior mail slot garnish, so I walked over to the buffer and hit that one little corner. (As I was about to be painting I'd removed the hot, filthy face shield by now...)

~WHANG!~

...Next thing I know, it feels like someone has hit me in the head with a hammer. I do the "feel area that hurts - examine hand for blood" drill, and retrieve a handful of blood from my forehead a bit below the hair line.

I go in the house and scrub it out, lather it up with antibiotic, and put an ice pack on to stem the rapid swelling.

It took a 1/2 hour to find the mailbox trim; it about 40' away in the neighbors yard. To get where it was, it had to have glanced off my head and essentially traveled in a big parabola about 50' high to clear a large tree.

Had it hit 3" lower I absolutely would have lost my eye.

I'm guilty of using a lathe w/o eye protection often when turning small aluminum or soft plastic parts. Steel and especially brass though, I always put on the glasses.

Angle grinders w/ wire cup wheels are the absolute worst. I pulled a piece of wire out of my leg a few weeks back that was in about 3/4" - through denim. Imagine that in your eye.

Salvador Dali's "Andalusian Dog" indeed...

yeah, Im guilty too...I try to follow the general rule that if I plug it in, I put em on. But, honestly, I dont always follow my own rules. Ive had a bunch of close calls, but luckily nothing too bad.

The worst was when I sprayed straight acetone into my eye from a spray bottle because I didnt take the 2 seconds it would have taken to look where the little arrow was pointing...wasnt fun, and was terribly painful, but a solid half hour of flushing, and I just looked all cheech and chong in on eye - nothing permanent.

Hope youre mending quickly OP, and thanks for the reminder...winter = working in the garage = more injuries. A shop-safety refresher is a good idea for all of us.

I've had to have a piece of rust SCRAPED from my eyeball before. One of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. At least with my surgeries I was out cold and/or heavily medicated. Wide awake and miserable for the eye procedure

It also might have helped to not chuck a buffing pad up to a die grinder. I don't know of any that are rated for the speed a die grinder runs at.

And teach your kids about eye safety as well.

Was hit right square across the nose with an egg as an innocent joke from a friend when I was a teenager. The egg shattered and pieces of shell embedded in both of my eyes. Makes my eyes water to this day just thinking about it. Can still remember having my eyelids held open as the eye doctor picked out the pieces with little tweezers. It was not pleasant! Fortunately no permanent damage.

My mom is nearly blind in one eye from a stick to the eye as a kid.

And one of the most important preventative things you can do for your eyes is sunglasses. Wear them! Excessive long term exposure to sun light can cause premature cataracts. We all want to continue to enjoy our hobbies as long as possible. Protect your eyes!

I was under the car a few days after drilling a hole in the cylinder head, and somehow knocked loose a nice corkscrew shaving of aluminum. It fell right into my eye. I've never felt anything so painful. I literally couldn't stand up or open either eye, so I had to crawl to the house on one hand (other clutching my face) blindly screaming for my wife. Fortunately it didn't even scratch my cornea, probably because my eyes went into panic mode, slammed shut and stopped moving all on their own.

Eyes are not something to play around with.

I work with dangerous E36 M3 every day. I wear glasses. I think, if the buffing wheel came apart with such force, a set of safety glasses probably would have just added shrapnel. I always try to remember to stay a bit off center when grinding- let the piece ricochet off the side of my head at worst, don't rely on the shield to stop it completely.

I also hate wearing gloves around rotating things. I much prefer a bandage over a missing chunk of finger to unwinding my arm from around the drill spindle.

Be aware of whats going on, wear the right stuff, have an escape plan, don't count on the government mandated safety crap.

For those who asked, I'm mending just fine. My health otherwise is very good (no problems with BP, cholesterol, blood sugar or anything like that) and I rarely get sick (although I get colds/flus a little more often than I used to now that I have kids). It was just a highly unlikely random infection and once it was drained and the antibiotics kicked in my body started recovering very quickly. The drain is out and there's not too much in the way of followup expected. I made a mistake in the first post and said "partial obstruction" - I meant to say "partial displacement" - meaning my airway was shoved off to the side and partially closed up. I couldn't feel it, but the CT was pretty darned clear about it. On a side note, I have a huge bandage on my neck and when I was out doing some errands on 10/31 it seemed like everybody in the store was staring at me. I think they couldn't tell if it was real, or just an understated Halloween costume. Anyhow, wrt Mr. Catastrophic Eye Injury; he wasn't perfectly coherent - sometimes he said buffing wheel, sometimes buffing pad - either way I figure he probably spun it up way the hell too fast. I disagree about safety glasses only adding shrapnel. I figure they might have helped, but still maybe not enough to save the eye - very hard to say. Full face shield I'm sure would have survived just fine. The specifics of the enormity of his injury and his severe misuse of equipment was not really my point, though. The main message I'm taking from it is to not let my guard down for that "last pass".

I have been to the hospital for an eye injury...once. If it has happened to you, even a minor one, you will never let it happen again.

I'm revisiting this old thread from 4 months ago. The importance of the message wrt eye protection remains, but my description of my health has unfortunately changed. My scar from the operation was slow to heal for the next 3 months following my last post, and while the hospitalization was definitely as a result of the staph infection, further testing has determined that the lymph node in question has squamous cell carcinoma. The primary tumor site is/was my right tonsil. I had a bilateral tonsillectomy a week and a half ago. Radiochemotherapy starts in about another week and a half. Good news is the causative agent is HPV-16 or 18, rather than the chewing tobacco I used (Copenhagen) up until 9 years ago. That, combined with my otherwise good health and comparatively young age means a likely good long term prognosis for me, but I'm going to be put through the wringer. I'm planning on taking the year off from autocrossing, too, which sucks. I also am hoping to not suffer too much neuropathy from the chemo, but it's kind of a crapshoot. Anyhow, my new safety message (besides the importance of eye protection and situational awareness) is to get your kids (regardless of gender) vaccinated for HPV. HPV cancer is on a rapid increase. It can effectively lie dormant for multiple decades before rearing it's ugly head (like my situation). In women it tends to cause cervical cancer, and in men, tonsil cancer. Trust me, you don't want your kids to get what I've got. Oh, and current estimates are that 80% of the US population has or has carried HPV and standard safe sex practices are considered only partially effective at prevention.

dang dude, i wish you the best in your battle / recovery.

MG_Bryan wrote: Someone one here took a piece of fish-mouthed tubing to the face not that long ago... I'm buying a full face shield tomorrow.

I still have weird nerve issues with the eyelid.

Best wishes on the recovery man! And with modern medicine, that's not just pity encouragement, I bet you'll be just fine.

Regarding the other thing, I'll own up to being that guy who didn't wear any eye protection. It wasn't for any philosophical reason, I simply didn't have anything and was too lazy to go pick up a pair of safety goggles. Plus my memory of them from HS shop class wasn't pleasant, all I remembered is that they'd fog up after a few seconds and I wouldn't see E36 M3 anyway.

But then my wife observed me working with powertools (which, granted, was a rarity at one point and then I slowly became a convert with grinders, sawzalls, airtools etc so it wasn't as great a concern before, I think the only power tool I had for the longest time was a hand drill). Anyway, during the next harborfreight trip, she came over and tossed a pack of safety glasses and leather work/welding gloves into my cart. I started moaning and she said shut up.

Later that week I was cutting up a bunch of angle iron to make a welding table and my angle grinder seized, exploding and tossing the disc. All I remember is a stiff doink off my new safety glasses. I took them off, gave them a kiss, and kept working. Gave her one later too. Turns out welding isn't all that hot with good gloves too... (yes I know, moronic in retrospect but it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time - hey, I've never been hurt, gonna live forever right?)