Injury Eye-Q: Do You Know What to Do?

Resist the urge to rub. You could grind the speck in deeper and possibly scratch your eye. Touching your eye with your fingers, cotton swabs, and other objects isn’t a good idea either. Let your tears wash the speck out, or use an eyewash to flush it away. If that doesn’t do the trick, pull the upper lid down and out over the lower lid and let it slide back.

Your eye itself usually doesn’t get hurt -- just the tissue around it. So, you can treat it on your own at home. But call your doctor if the pain and swelling don’t get better after a day or two, or if you have trouble seeing. Other signs you need help right away: blood in your iris or pupil, blood from your ears or nose, dizziness, fainting, vomiting, behavior changes, or severe pain.

Save the steak for dinner! There’s no science backing this as a treatment for a shiner. Plus, the bacteria on it could cause an infection. Instead, put a bag of frozen peas or an ice pack on it ASAP for 15-20 minutes every hour.

Even a light hit from a champagne cork, a piece of metal, or a ball can lead to damage that you can’t feel or see right away. Your doctor needs to check the inside of your eye to look for an injury. Vision loss could happen within hours or days, so get to the ER quickly. Don’t stop to rinse the eye or apply ointment -- that could make the area around it slippery and harder for the doctor to check

Wash your eye right away. Put your head under a gentle, steady stream of lukewarm tap water for at least 20 minutes. Then call your eye doctor or the emergency room to see what you should do next. If you've splashed a substance such as drain cleaner or alkali, go straight to the ER after vigorously flushing your eye. If your eye is really red or blurry, go straight to the doctor or ER after you rinse it. You can put a wet cloth or an ice pack on it if it hurts, but don’t rub it.

Acids, like from a car battery or nail polish remover, can make your eyes burn and look red, but you can wash them out fairly easily. Toilet bowl cleaner, ammonia, oven cleaner, and other alkaline substances won’t cause eye pain or redness right away, but they sink in faster than acids, so they’re more serious.

It’s never a good idea to stare directly at the sun -- you can seriously damage your eyes if you do. But one common injury, snow blindness, happens when the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays bounce off highly reflective surfaces like snow, ice, water, and sand. It’s like having a sunburned eye. You don’t actually go blind, but it can keep you from seeing for a day or two. Other symptoms include pain, redness, tearing, a gritty feeling in your eye, and sensitivity to light.

Blood-red spots in the whites of your eyes look scary, but they’re usually as harmless as a bruise on your skin. This type of eye bleeding, called a subconjunctival hemorrhage, happens when a blood vessel in your eyeball leaks or breaks. Even minor trauma can cause it. But you usually don’t need treatment. The blood will clear on its own in a few weeks.

A poke in the eye or wearing contacts for too long can scratch or scrape the clear, protective surface on the front of your eye. But it might take hours before you notice symptoms, like redness, blurry vision, and a gritty feeling. See a doctor ASAP if you think it’s happened. A minor scratch will usually heal on its own in a few days, but your doctor may use drops or ointment to prevent an infection or to ease inflammation and the chance of scarring. 

Studies show patches keep the eye from healing, since bacteria like dark, warm places to grow. Just keep your peeper closed or loosely tape a paper cup or eye shield over it. And resist the urge to rub. It can make the scratch worse.

If your eye gets cut or punctured, tape the bottom of a paper cup to the area around it. The cover will protect you until you can get to a doctor. It could get worse if you try to rinse it with water, take the object out, or rub or put pressure on your eye. Ditto for taking pain meds like aspirin or ibuprofen, which can thin your blood and make bleeding worse.