Woman nearly dies after glitter lodges in her eye

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A woman suffers a near-to-death experience after glitter goes inside her right eye, the incident happens while she’s helping her daughter crafting card for an occassion.

The Florida woman nearly dies of blood poisoning after getting a piece of glitter lodged in her eye while helping her daughter make a Valentine’s Day card.

The woman named Erica Diaz, 33, was helping her older daughter make Valentine’s Day cards when she accidentally got a piece of glitter lodged in her right eye – and it wouldn’t come out.

The glitter caused an infection that claimed her vision, caused severe pain and agony.

Medical experts has already done series of test and medical remedies such as eye drops, cornea transplants and injections just to save the eye.

Doctors expressed a chance that Diaz could die due to sepsis, as her body had started to shut down.

Month later, the Florida resident had surgery to have her eye removed and after one month she got prosthesis and now faces a huge medical bills.

She also told via an interview, amid the struggles she and her family faces it also help to make them even closer.

The mother-of-two said she had no idea that a craft project would end up claiming her right eye – and almost her life.

Flashing back to the incident, Diaz, writer and singer from North Lauderdale, Florida, was helping her daughter, Zoey, make Valentine’s Day cards for her classmates last year – adding gold glitter to make them seem extra special.

She added that while cleaning up, a piece of glitter got lodged in her eye – and wouldn’t come out, triggering an infection.

The incident pushes Diaz to go in and out the hospital and even – undergoing two failed corneal transplants and multiple injections into her eye.

The 33-year-old woman even found herself “near” to death from sepsis – blood poisoning – as her body began to shut down because of infection.

Unfortunately, doctors could not save her right eye – and it was removed on last March 2016.

‘I ended up stripped of all of the things that I thought made me beautiful, and I figured out that even as a chubby bald Cyclops I was still a beautiful woman, still a beautiful human. I’m thankful for it all in that way,’ she told Daily Mail.

Just before losing her eye, Diaz had always been healthy – with average vision.

‘I didn’t know it but I would end up there almost every day sometimes for 18 hours a day for the next month,’ she said.

The hole grew from one millimeter to seven millimeters in under a week – and doctors prescribed even stronger eye drops after tests didn’t show anything troublesome.

‘Eventually it worked up to 12 different medications some needing to be administered on an hourly basis. Those drops were very painful and caustic,’ she shared over the pain she suffers due to glitter penetration in her eye.

Sharing her near to death experience, she said “the surgeons and I decided that since I had no function left in the eye at all, it was constantly painful, and now could realistically lead to sepsis and death that it just needed to go.”

The local anesthesia didn’t work, and Diaz had to go under general anesthesia, which made the procedure more difficult.

And once the surgeons got into her eye, they found it was completely filled with pus.

The doctors cleaned it out as best they could – but the first cornea transplant ended up failing, with the iris of the eye leaking out in between stitches from the pressure of the pus.

One week later, she was back in the operating room.

The second cornea transplant failed as well, since it ended up removing all of the vitreous of the eye – the substance that is similar to ‘jelly’ that fills an eyeball.

‘This was the point at which the eye also started to grow internal tumors and to dimple,’ Diaz noted.

In 2015, she had a prosthetic eye implanted, to give her a sense of normality.

But because she has only one eye, Diaz no longer has the ability to perceive depth anymore.

Another suffering that the woman experienced was the expenses, Diaz undergoes 12 different eye drops at one point and at least one of them was $1,000.

Her husband had to take two months off of work to help her through the ordeal and recovery – and the couple had to take out loans to cover their heaping bills.

‘I don’t think people understand how expensive it can be, I was on 12 different eye drops at one point and at least one of them was $1,000.’

Amid the hardship and financial burden, she’s still grateful for the experience.

‘The flip side of that, though, is that it’s also done a lot of good.’

She said, the experience allowed her to develop a new found love and respect for herself and her flaws – spending more time focused on people and her passions than whether she’s ‘too short or too fat.’

However, Diaz knows that what happened to her is a ‘freak incident’ and hopes it doesn’t wean people off of using glitter.

In order to help her with her financial difficulties, Diaz’s friends and relatives used different mediums to help such as losting her case in charity website GoFundMe, which aims to earn money for her medical bills.

In the end, she does hope people learn from her experience – and use appropriate eye protection when working with small particles.