A woman from Brooklyn, USA, deeply regrets watching the solar eclipse with the naked eye in 2017: she now lives with irreparable damage to her eyes.
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Bridget Kyeremating, 29, couldn't get her hands on the protective glasses, but she thought a few seconds wouldn't do her any harm.
“I couldn't focus on the sun or the precise curvature of the moon. I thought I would close one eye to focus better. I could barely see anything, but I looked at the sun for 10 to 15 seconds before my eyes started to blink,” she said in an interview with The Sun. Feeling bad, she went inside.” New York Post.
For the rest of the day she had no effects and felt fine. The next day, things got worse, when she could no longer read the words on her cell phone screen with her left eye, the one with which she had seen the eclipse. “I couldn't see all the words because there was a blind spot in the middle of my iris,” she recalls.
At first she thought she wasn't fully awake, but she soon realized something was wrong.
After seeing an ophthalmologist, she learned that although she had not suffered any damage to her retina, she had distorted vision due to her eye being exposed to the sun. This is called “slow 20/20 vision,” Bridget Kyeremating explained. She said she can see perfectly, but reading letters and words with her left eye takes longer.
“I think my right eye and my left eye work together, but it doesn't affect me much anymore. I know that my eyesight deteriorates with age. […] “It's just a matter of time, but I hope that with the right precautions and continuing to wear sunglasses, I can slow down the progression,” said the woman, who now suffers from headaches and migraine pain on the left side of her head.
