A mother-of-five, Anaya Peterson, who tattooed her eyeballs, has ended up in the hospital and risks losing her sight.
The 32-year-old tattooed her eyeballs blue and purple, drawing inspiration from Australian model “blue-eyed dragon” Amber Luke, who got her eyeballs inked blue in 2019—before going temporarily blind for three weeks.
Anaya has been hospitalized since the eye alteration and is likely to become permanently blind as a result of an allergic reaction to the eyeball ink.
The mum, who also has a tongue split and facial tattoos, now says she wishes she had listened to her daughter who had warned her against the procedure.
She got her right eyeball tattooed blue in July 2020 and decided to get her left eye dyed purple in December 2020.
After months without complications, Anaya was shocked to wake up in August 2021 with “swollen” eyelids.
As the swelling continued to get worse despite taking antibiotics, Anaya checked herself into the hospital’s A&E ward.
Anaya disclosed that her daughter India was never supportive of her getting the eye tattoo, as she feared that her mom would “go blind.”
“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.
“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. my [top] eyelid started to swell, and my bottom eyelid started to swell. It kept getting worse and worse. I looked like I’d done ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
“I took the option to go [to hospital] myself. They gave me surgery and took samples of my eye. They wouldn’t have been able to do it while I was awake, I would have been an absolute nightmare, so they put me to sleep. 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.
“It was traumatizing to go through. I just remember thinking, I’m not doing that sh*t again, with the eye tattoo. I’m definitely not doing that sh*t again.” She said.
The ordeal has left Anaya regretting her choice to follow in the footsteps of Amber Luke, after she was told by ophthalmologists that she is now at a very high risk of contracting glaucoma and her eyesight is already worsening, with her vision clouded by “hundreds of thousands of floaters.”