When it comes to celebrating the 4th of July who isn’t excited about watching fireworks and playing with sparklers! But every year the emergency room has patients who have an eye injury due to a fireworks injury. This article shares the story of a teenager named Jameson Lamb who suffered from an eye injury due to fireworks. So, Be safe and smart this 4th of July…enjoy the fireworks…safely.
“When Jameson Lamb and his friends began lighting fireworks one 4th of July, it all seemed like harmless fun. Little did they know that Jameson would be accidentally shot in the eye with what they thought was an already-extinguished roman candle.
Lamb is now 18 years old and has spent the last two years recovering from the fireworks injury he sustained in 2012. The roman candle that hit his eye melted his eyelid onto his eyeball and severed the nerves. His parents describe the injury as looking as if he had a black hole on his face. All that he could see out of his injured eye was the color yellow, which was caused by the sulfur in the fireworks. That night, he wasn’t sure if he would ever see out of his right eye again. Jameson has gone through multiple surgeries to regain his sight, including a stem cell transplant from one eye to another to repair his damaged cornea. He has now recovered most of his vision in his right eye thanks to the work of his ophthalmologists, Pete Setabutr, M.D., and Ali Djalilian, M.D. However, Jameson knows that he is one of the lucky ones.”One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from this experience is that fireworks aren’t toys,” Jameson says. “People need to know that there are risks. I hope that others can learn from me, so they don’t have to go through the same thing I did just to find out.”
He’s spreading that message through national media interviews. “I won’t be playing with fireworks this time, that’s for sure,” he said in an interview televised June 26 on NBC News.
American emergency rooms treated 5,200 fireworks injuries in the two weeks before and after Independence Day, according to a 2013 Consumer Product Safety Commission report. Nearly half of the reported injuries occurred in people under 20 years old. Eye injuries caused by fireworks range from corneal abrasions – scratches on the surface of the eye – from airborne debris to more serious, potentially blinding injuries such as retinal detachment and rupture of the eyeball.
Source article written Anna Schmidt / Eyesmart.com
