tttonyyy
0
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2014
- Messages
- 116
- Points
- 18
Historic story since I haven't posted in a while and this occurred in 2015.
I was using a 100mW 405nm to charge a section of an object 3D printed with glow-in-the-dark filament. Sounds fun, right? I had suitable eye protection available but I wasn't wearing it on this occasion "as it's only 100mW and I'm being careful".
I had a reflection off a black, semi-gloss worktop surface which caught me in one eye. It was very brief, just an instantaneous flash, but I knew straight away what had happened.
There wasn't any pain, though it did feel uncomfortable (possibly psychological because it also feels uncomfortable in the same way when I think about it now), and of course I didn't bother getting it checked out because I'm an idiot. Yes, I know that intervention could have prevented further ongoing damage as a consequence, but I suppose I wasn't willing to admit my own foolishness so I just hoped it wasn't that bad. I read a lot of threads here in the hope of finding one where things turned out OK, but the outlook didn't look good from them. Definitely denial at that stage.
I could see a permanent dark squiggle just above and to the left of my centre of vision in the affected eye. This made reading (off paper, or on a screen) a somewhat annoying experience, but, fortunately, didn't affect my ability to work.
At some point in the coming weeks I accepted that denial wasn't working for me, and I had done some permanent damage.
After about six weeks, the squiggle seemed to be fading slowly and went from being visible all the time, to being visible during transitions between dark and light (or blinking looking at anything light). Many months later it faded to the extent that I could only see it if looking for it and blinking into a bright flat light. I soon stopped noticing that it was there at all, which I figured was down to the brain being very good at compensating for damage to sections of vision.
Skip ahead four years, and I can't see any artefact in my vision when blinking into bright lights. I decided to finally get it checked out properly. I explained what had happened and got a very detailed retina examination, which included visual inspection with light focused through a lens to one side of the inspection tool, a pressure tonometry test, and digital retina imaging.
I am very, very fortunate in that they found nothing wrong, and everything was normal - one of those rare cases where damage was not permanent.
"It'll be OK because I'm being careful" is something that I suspect a lot of us tell ourselves despite knowing the dangers. I know I did at the time, but you know, these things only happen to other, more careless people.
I still love lasers, but very rarely use mine these days. I don't trust myself with them like I did, and some things you don't forget so easily.
I was using a 100mW 405nm to charge a section of an object 3D printed with glow-in-the-dark filament. Sounds fun, right? I had suitable eye protection available but I wasn't wearing it on this occasion "as it's only 100mW and I'm being careful".
I had a reflection off a black, semi-gloss worktop surface which caught me in one eye. It was very brief, just an instantaneous flash, but I knew straight away what had happened.
There wasn't any pain, though it did feel uncomfortable (possibly psychological because it also feels uncomfortable in the same way when I think about it now), and of course I didn't bother getting it checked out because I'm an idiot. Yes, I know that intervention could have prevented further ongoing damage as a consequence, but I suppose I wasn't willing to admit my own foolishness so I just hoped it wasn't that bad. I read a lot of threads here in the hope of finding one where things turned out OK, but the outlook didn't look good from them. Definitely denial at that stage.
I could see a permanent dark squiggle just above and to the left of my centre of vision in the affected eye. This made reading (off paper, or on a screen) a somewhat annoying experience, but, fortunately, didn't affect my ability to work.
At some point in the coming weeks I accepted that denial wasn't working for me, and I had done some permanent damage.
After about six weeks, the squiggle seemed to be fading slowly and went from being visible all the time, to being visible during transitions between dark and light (or blinking looking at anything light). Many months later it faded to the extent that I could only see it if looking for it and blinking into a bright flat light. I soon stopped noticing that it was there at all, which I figured was down to the brain being very good at compensating for damage to sections of vision.
Skip ahead four years, and I can't see any artefact in my vision when blinking into bright lights. I decided to finally get it checked out properly. I explained what had happened and got a very detailed retina examination, which included visual inspection with light focused through a lens to one side of the inspection tool, a pressure tonometry test, and digital retina imaging.
I am very, very fortunate in that they found nothing wrong, and everything was normal - one of those rare cases where damage was not permanent.
"It'll be OK because I'm being careful" is something that I suspect a lot of us tell ourselves despite knowing the dangers. I know I did at the time, but you know, these things only happen to other, more careless people.
I still love lasers, but very rarely use mine these days. I don't trust myself with them like I did, and some things you don't forget so easily.
