Horrible irony.

[lasersbee]

Man that's a bummer for your friend..:cryyy:
His wife must feel like crap...

I always try to wear eye protection if
I know I'll be working with tools or
equipment that could potentially throw
crap into my face.
I cheat sometimes and have been lucky
so far.

Jerry

 

[Richie89]

That sucks.

Kinda glad I wear glasses sometimes, have protected me on more than one occasion.

Yeah I'm the same way, I also wear glasses so I feel that helps a lot when it comes to accidentally getting things in my eye.

Unfortunate accident. Doesn't sound good.

Accidents happen--all the more reason to wear goggles when using lasers rather than pretend an accident can not happen to you.

Very true. Out of all the things that can happen I always feel messing with vision is the most horrible thing because quit frankly I mean this in the most serious way, that I would rather get shot than take a Powerful laser in the eye, provided that the gun doesn't hit you in a life threatening way.

Life does change suddenly. Best wishes and prayers for that man. :can:

Thanks bob

Sorry to hear about your friend. That's quite sad actually

-Alex

Yes it really is, I hate hearing stuff like this

Did they stop teaching biology in public schools down in the bible belt or what's going on here?

Well however that works, I'm not an eye doctor and neither is he so he may have just said it wrong to me and got what the doctor said mixed up but however the Pupil works it got severely damaged is all I know.

 

[Richie89]

That's terrible news, Richie. I feel so badly for your friend. I wear glasses too, though I did wear contacts when I was younger. It has protected me from eyes damage many times. We were even allowed to use them in place of safety googles in Organic Chemistry lab. I hope your friend's eyesight is not as permanent as has been foretold.

I hope not either, he says that his vision is a tad blurry in that particular eye but his biggest problem is that since the pupil is wide open his eye thinks it's dark so during the day it's incredibly bright, and your eye is supposed to dilate small in bright light and his won't do that

Sorry to hear of your friend's accident, Richie, hope his recovery goes as well as possible.
I use those damn bungee's quite often, and am always worried about something like this happening.

Yes those dang bungee cords are dangerous, I've had to use one on more than one occasion and I never really thought about how bad they could be until now

That is pretty horrible indeed, though i hope and suppose it hit him only one eye so he will not be actually blind, just have a hard time judging distances for a while.

With access to really good medical care your friend may have chances of partial recovery too though. As i understand in resulted in a laceration that damaged the cornea, pupil, possible lens, but not the retina.

The sort of good news about that is that most of it can be treated, whereas retinal damage often is not treatable. A damaged lens can be replaced with an artifical one (fairly common for cataracts), a cornea can be transplanted, and loss of pupil funciton could be fixed to some degree using a contact lens with limited aperture (this makes you lose dark/light adaptability to some degree, but allows sight in most conditions though painful when going into brightly lit areas).

Downside is that all of this is -very- expensive to do. In many european countries that cost would be mostly covered by (mandatory) healthcare insurance and such, but i'm aware that this may not be the case in the US, and that the cost to save vision to the damaged eye may not be coverable, despite being technically possible.

But even then, living with only one functional eye is not -that- hard. My father lost vision in one eye due to physical trauma a few years ago. He can still do virtually anything he could before, though had a fall/stumble or two shortly after due to lack of depth perception.

If you are blind in one eye it's definitly time to stop messing around with lasers though, regardless of safety precautions available i'd never build or use one again if i only had one eye remaining.

Yeah your right, with all this modern medicine technology I think he'll get some good treatment, it definitely is very expensive to say the least, and I think what you said is true in the fact that some of that stuff isn't covered by healthcare, and to be honest I don't think he even has healthcare. The US healthcare system is so messed up as it stands now so I don't even know what's going to happen.

Tragic.. that powerful laser u should never have batteries in unless it has safety features that prevents accidental power on..

Yes what Paul said. This wasn't a Laser accident, is was just insane that we were talking about laser the day this heppend to him.

 

[paul1598419]

Richie, to dilate means to open up. What you meant to say is the iris doesn't contract causing the pupil to remain fully open, or large. The pupil is the dark spot in the iris that is the optical opening to the fundus of the eye. Best wishes for your friend.

 

[Richie89]

Richie, to dilate means to open up. What you meant to say is the iris doesn't contract causing the pupil to remain fully open, or large. The pupil is the dark spot in the iris that is the optical opening to the fundus of the eye. Best wishes for your friend.

Ah yes! Thanks Paul
Mr Cyparagon over here making me look stupid :crackup:

 

[Benm]

It would be very sad if he lost vision in that eye permanently due to healthcare being so expensive and/or hard to insure in the US, while i could have been partially remedied in many other countries without going into an amount of debt that would haunt you for the rest of your life.

As far as accidents happen: one good way to get your eyes injured when building (but not operating) a laser is solder. Usually soldering isn't very dangerous, but sometimes you just manage to unsolder something that (you at that point disover to be) under mechanical tension, and it just pings lose and flings a drop of molten solder around.

I'm not sure how common injuries with that are, but i've picked a drop of solder from an eyebrow at some point, so that'd be pretty close to getting in an eye.

As I understand this usually does not result in blindness though, there is a way to remove the solder and repair the cornea if you proceed to the ER quickly.

Some people suggest soldering with safety goggles, but for electronics works i think that's a bit excessive, and they also distort your vision a bit which is not idea when working on really tiny things.

 

[Julian95]

Ouch. That sounds horrible. I once had a little accident with a 1W handheld, but thankfully it was a reflection from a window and no permanent damage was done to any of my eyes. Either way, it was really scary. Best of luck to your friend, hopefully he can recover his eye anytime in the future.