A mother of five ignored her daughter’s warnings about the dangers of getting her eyeballs tattooed — and now, she’s going blind.
Anaya Peterson found Australian model Amber Luke’s decision to tattoo her eyeballs a vivid blue and go blind for three weeks, astounding. Although Luke regained her vision, it seems that Peterson, 32 years old, might lose her sight forever.
“I was just going to get one [eye tattoo] at first, because I thought that if I go blind, at least I’ve got the other eye. I should have stuck with that,” Peterson said. “My daughter told me that I didn’t want to do that [the tattoo] asking, ‘What if you go blind?’ She wasn’t on board with it at all.”
The Belfast, Northern Ireland-based woman now regrets not listening to her 7-year-old’s advice after she was hospitalized from a reaction to the eyeball ink modification. She is now at risk of developing cataracts.
“I don’t have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance, I can’t see features on faces,” she stated. “If I didn’t have my eyeballs tattooed, I wouldn’t be having this problem. Even today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous.”
She’s going to “have this problem for the rest of her life,” as tattoo ink cannot be removed from the eyes.
But before her tattoo tale turned harrowing, it began like any other—for months after she inked her right eye blue in July 2020, she had no issues whatsoever. Despite some complications from dryness and headaches later on down the road, she decided to go ahead with tattooing her left eyeball purple come December of that year.
In August 2021, things went downhill. One morning she woke up to find her eyelids swollen and looking bruised. The worsening symptoms then led her to check into the hospital, where doctors gave her intravenous medication for three days and biopsied her eye which was causing the most issues.
“I just wanted to be at home watching [TV] to be honest. I can’t even put it into words. It wasn’t nice at all whatsoever,” she said. “It was traumatizing to go through. I just remember thinking, ‘I’m not doing that s – – t again, with the eye tattoo. I’m definitely not doing that s – – t again.’ “
The body modification enthusiast left the hospital “on the mend,” but regrets her decision to tattoo what is commonly referred to as “the whites of her eyes.”
“I’m kind of recovered — on the outside, it’s recovered. It’s just inside. I’m basically on the verge of going blind,” she stated. “If I could go back in time, I would have done one black [eye tattoo] and left it. I would have done one black. Absolutely.”
Even though she constantly faces negativity online, Peterson joyfully focuses on the positive.
“I tell my daughter not to care about the opinions of someone else because they’re just ordinary people like you,” she stated. “You have positive comments and negative comments, but the negative comments always overshadow the positive ones.”
As Peterson’s inspiration, Australian influencer Luke says, if done correctly, an eyeball tattoo should never cause blindness.
“Unfortunately, my artist went too deep into my eyeball,” she said. “If your eyeball procedure’s done correctly, you’re not supposed to go blind at all.”
