Will this little hair in my eye eventually go away?

July 27, 2008 2:08 PM

I have a tiny facial hair stuck in my eye. Will my body eventually reabsorb it or what?

It doesn't hurt, but I can definitely feel it floating around the sphere of my eyeball like a microscopic Magellan. If I had health insurance, I'd go bug an eye doctor, but I don't, so I won't. I just want to know if that little bastard is going to dissolve and eventually be welcomed back into the fold.

posted by bjork24 to health & fitness (12 comments total)

I think it is more likely to eventually get blinked forward into one of the sides of your eye and end up lodged with some of the morning crusty stuff in front of your ear duct or at the crease of your eye. If you'd like to get rid of it, you could try thoroughly flushing your eye with water- that usually does the truck for me.
posted by arnicae at 2:13 PM on July 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I hate it when that happens; with three pets, I get the occasional hair lodged in an eye. If it bugs me a lot, and won't come out, I make myself cry and it flushes it right out. Here ya go.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 2:51 PM on July 27, 2008

I agree with arnicae, and I'd also be a bit concerned that it might scratch the cornea, which is incredibly easy to do. So I would suggest flushing it a ton (saline solution or eye wash would be best) and, depending on how squeamish when it comes to eye things, maybe see if you can help it find its way out. Good luck!
posted by katemcd at 2:53 PM on July 27, 2008

Yeah, it'll get flushed out but be super-annoying till the. Maybe flush it out with eye drops? Also, pulling my eyelid (by the eyelashes) out and down so it covers the lower lashes sometimes helps.
posted by lunasol at 2:57 PM on July 27, 2008

Everyone else is right; it'll work it's own way out with or without your help. The liquid around your eyeball isn't capable of dissolving (much less digesting) the keratin in a hair. Pretty much the only place where that kind of thing happens is the stomach.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 3:20 PM on July 27, 2008

I get eyelashes in my eyes far more than is apparently normal, so I've come up with several ways to remove them. Most frequently for the hairs that I can easily find and reach, I gently apply a very wet finger directly to the hair and then pull away. The hair usually comes away on the wet finger and you've only barely touched the eye surface.

The sure-fire way to get it out is to open your eye under water and flush it out.
posted by odinsdream at 3:52 PM on July 27, 2008

For times like this, my little bottle of eye wash with a flusher cup has worked wonders. Same idea as sticking your eye under the faucet, just more controlled for the eye-poking phobic.
posted by phunniemee at 3:58 PM on July 27, 2008

I second phunniemee, I actually keep that in my house as a standard thing. It does work wonders.
posted by pokeedog at 4:01 PM on July 27, 2008

I generally replace the "flush your eyes with.." with "have your girl/boy/roommate-friend flush your eye with".. But agree with everyone elses experiences. When it seems to "dissapear" and I cant find it -- I usually leave it well enough alone, and 5 minutes later my vision is "blurry" as it has recentered and I can use the wet finger attach technique.
posted by SirStan at 5:33 PM on July 27, 2008

When I have something stuck in my eye I use my thumb and forefinger to grasp the eyelid, pull the eyelid out, back down, and then in towards the nose. Doing this repeatedly helps push the offending object towards the corner of your eye, and then you can push it out with a finger.
posted by radioamy at 9:01 PM on July 27, 2008

anecdotal advice: my girlfriend has eyelashes constantly going in her eye. A few years back, she was rubbing her eyes a lot, and after a while, a very long glob made up of eyelashes (probably every eyelash that went into her eyeball from the age of 0 to 22) came out of her eyeball.

Not only was this crazy (and kind of awesome), but there is a moral too: your eye eventually pukes foreign objects out.
posted by carpyful at 10:26 PM on July 27, 2008

Wow, carpyful. I've always wondered if there's a glob of felted cat hair behind my eyeball. Now I know...
posted by razdrez at 5:51 PM on July 28, 2008