That amazing tidbit aside, here’s what you should do when you scratch your eye:

• Avoid rubbing your eyes – that can make the scratch worse.

• Rinse your eye with a sterile saline eye wash or a multipurpose contact lens solution. Try to avoid rinsing with tap water or bottled water, as they can contain pathogens that can cause a serious, vision-threatening infection if introduced to an eye with a scratched cornea.

• Don’t patch the eye, since this can speed bacterial growth and increase the risk of an eye infection.

• Stick to glasses, rather than contacts. Contact lenses can increase risk of an infection developing under the lens.

• After flushing the eye, if redness, pain or foreign body sensation continues, seek immediate medical attention because corneal abrasions can cause serious harm within hours.

Put vision in focus for 2020 and make sure to go see an ophthalmologist in the new year!

Here are some general safety tips to make sure you don’t have to take an emergency trip to see your ophthalmologist:

• Decorating – pointy lights, glass ornaments, and sharp needles all pose significant eye injury risk. Moreover, if you are spraying anything like artificial snow be sure to keep those chemicals out of your eyes.

• Christmas Tree🎄– wear eye protection if cutting down or trimming your own tree. Use caution when mounting it on your car, and while setting up as well. It’s easy to be poked in the eye with branches when tree wrapping is released, or when working on securing the tree.

• Popping the bubbly 🍾 – New Year’s celebrations and champagne go hand in hand, but so do champagne bottle corks and eye injuries. This year, uncork that bottle of champagne with a hand towel over it to ensure the cork doesn’t fly. While not as flashy as a cork flying across the room, sending a party guest to the emergency room isn’t exactly a positive party memory.

• Toys and other gifts 🎁 – Avoid purchasing toys with sharp, protruding or projectile parts. Before gifting a doll house or remote control car to little ones, be sure to unpack it and identify any sharp edges on the toy or its accessories.

• Mistletoe – It is is meant to be a surprise, but sometimes it’s a bit too much of one… right in the eye! Those on the shorter side are in luck, but all those tall guys and gals out there need to keep an eye out for that unexpected mistletoe.

Use cardboard, thick paper, cork board or otherwise sturdy material as your game board.

Create pairs of cards out of cardboard or thick paper, and use puff paint to write words or contractions in Braille on them. This is also a great way to start learning Braille for beginners, or can be made more difficult for advanced readers.

Use Velcro to keep the cards put on the board, and voila! You have an accessible gift to give this holiday season! 🌲