Republished June 28, 2024
A woman with diabetes could not see well and accidentally put drops for her blood sugar monitoring device into her eyes. The bottle looked just like the eye drops she used for glaucoma. Both bottles had yellow caps and black lettering on the label.
Another woman grabbed what she thought was a bottle of natural tears and put a few drops into each eye. Her eyes immediately started burning and her vision became blurry. She then realized that she had actually grabbed a sample bottle of mometasone, a steroid lotion, that her doctor had given her to put on her irritated skin after her allergy shots. The woman had placed the mometasone bottle in a drawer right next to the eye drops.
Another woman accidentally put super glue into one eye instead of saline drops, gluing her eyelids together!
All the women required medical care, but no one lost their eyesight.
Here's what you can do: Use caution with medicines that come in bottles or tubes that are similar to eye drop, ointment, or glue containers. To prevent mistakes, store all medicines away from these products. Turn the lights on in the room and read the medicine label before taking it.
