Removing Eyes

SilverPhoenix

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Okay, a great, horrible subject.

Part of the main culture in the novel I began the other day involves removing your eyes from their sockets,
literally cutting them out, when you come of age.

It's fantasy so mages do a Blessing which prevents heavy blood loss, some pain, passing out etc.
yet I know there must be tons of other consequences. Like perhaps nerve damage.

It's fantasy and they have no physical bodies thought out yet, so that's adaptable for it to be possible for them to do this to themselves.

The Questions: What other things will happen to a person if they cut their eyes out? What will it look like afterwards?
Is it at all possible to survive?

Answers to any of those or relevant info would be hugely appreciated.
Otherwise, I'll go try cutting my eyes out and see ;)
 

Voyager

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Good luck with this. I had my antagonist gouge someone's eyes out and everyone made me put them back. My betas are no fun :D
 

eldragon

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Yes, when your eyes become so infected, and you can no longer see through them and never will be able to again, eyeballs are removed surgically.

Prosthetic eyeballs are inserted to create a more normal appearance.

The surgeon removes the infectious eyeball and then sews the eyelid shut. The sutures are removed later on, like other suture removal.

There's a documentary called "Living Without Pain," and in that film, you see a little girl who wears a prosthetic eye. You watch her parents insert it, too.

You can watch it for free on Netflix.
 

Zelenka

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Good luck with this. I had my antagonist gouge someone's eyes out and everyone made me put them back. My betas are no fun :D

Am I strange that I really liked that bit in yours? :eek:

I don't really have anything intellectual to offer the discussion but just wanted to say, SilverPhoenix, that it sounds a really cool idea. I have a thing about removing eyes (though in mine its one of my demon / ancient god type things) and so this thread's really useful.
 

CaroGirl

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Do you have lasers? I think if you were to remove the eyeballs with some kind of cauterizing device you wouldn't have to worry about the blood loss.

You can either sew the eyelids shut, stick in prosthetic eyeballs, or leave them hollow, which would look horrible and empty, but no one can see anyway, right? I don't know what would happen to a face if the sockets were left hollow for a lifetime. I wonder if it would cause bone loss, like your jaw gets without teeth. Interesting.
 

WendyNYC

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This is probably not helpful, but I had a hamster that lost an eyeball and he survived just fine. It didn't really even bleed much. He looked pretty gross after that, like just a fleshy pink hole where his eye used to be. If you care to know the gory details, PM me.

I think that in humans, the eyeball is bigger than the eye socket and sets back into the skull, so it might take some effort in getting them out. And there is always the risk of infection.
 

GeorgeK

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The eye socket is larger than the eyeball, but it would require some skill or strength to remove one. You would not have to go through bone. All those soft tissue attachments add up. There's a reason eyes don't just fall out on their own. Sewing the lids shut would be a surgical contraindication for infection as well as for a future planned prosthesis. You could put a drain in, but otherwise you dont close over an infection or it will simply abcess. Prostheses fit into the socket, behind the lid. The lids still work and are what basically hold in the prosthesis, that and a sort of vacuum effect. The soft tissue will sort of sag when the eye is gone and so the pinkish cavity that remains won't look as big or full as if the eye were there. The lids will be open, but sagging and sunken, and then you see this very unappealing pinkish lumpy cavity.
 

oneblindmouse

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I have a griend who got hit in the eye at age 20 and lost all sight in that eye. She wore an eyepatch but was in extreme pain for over 20 years bofore they surgically 'amputated' the eye and the nerve. Now she is happily pain-free, has a beautiful blue glass eye with a diamond in it, and is a successdul artist! A pillar of strength and a great role model!
 

Maryn

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If I didn't already know GeorgeK was a doctor, I'd know he was a doctor. Perfect answer.

Glass eyes do fall out, but not under normal circumstances. I knew a guy in college with a glass eye and a frat boy's fondness for beer. Glass eyes don't stay in when you're slung over somebody's shoulder because you're not really ambulatory. More than once my boyfriend and I chased that eye down the hall. It was never damaged, just dirty.

The other day on TV (Discovery? TLC?) I saw a thing about making prosthetic eyes, and it was not a sphere like the guy I knew had, but a slightly flexible third of a sphere or so, which went under the lid. You saw the guy with nothing in the socket, briefly, and it did sag and show its emptiness. The fake eye was amazing, and moved slightly when he turned his eyes (the one working and the fake) to either side. Just barely noticeable, less so than a lazy eye. Wow!

Maryn, who likes medical shows
 

WittyandorIronic

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My medical knowledge is pretty slim, but I thought I once heard that without an orb, either real or fake, that the eye socket would eventually crumble/disintegrate/collapse. Maybe one of the more medically inclined can tell us whether that is true.
 

eldragon

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The eye socket is larger than the eyeball, but it would require some skill or strength to remove one. You would not have to go through bone. All those soft tissue attachments add up. There's a reason eyes don't just fall out on their own. Sewing the lids shut would be a surgical contraindication for infection as well as for a future planned prosthesis. You could put a drain in, but otherwise you dont close over an infection or it will simply abcess. Prostheses fit into the socket, behind the lid. The lids still work and are what basically hold in the prosthesis, that and a sort of vacuum effect. The soft tissue will sort of sag when the eye is gone and so the pinkish cavity that remains won't look as big or full as if the eye were there. The lids will be open, but sagging and sunken, and then you see this very unappealing pinkish lumpy cavity.
I stand corrected about the stitches. The only time I've seen it in person was with my cat. They sewed his eyelids shut after they removed them, and 10 days later I had to take him back to have the stitches removed. Of course, there was never going to be a prosthesis.

On that show - "Living without pain." the girl did have her eyelids sewn shut, but that was to prevent her from clawing them out. (It didn't.)

Her disease prevented her from feeling pain, and they couldn't keep her hands out of her eyes.

So that's perhaps not the norm.
 

SilverPhoenix

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Wow! I didn't expect this much of a response.
Thanks so much guys <3 All this is a big help.

I'm yearning for pictures now, but I'm extremely squeamish with seeing gore, though comfortable writing it :scared:


Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWkOr81BOpc

blurgggh! I found a vid of this man. I had to hold my hand very hard over my mouth )=
Poor, brave bloke.
 
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HeronW

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There's not that much blood loss, not enough to make someone pass out because the vessels that feed the eyes are small. The pain is excruciating because of all the nerves. Nerve damage is redundant because you can't see once the eyeball is separated from the optic nerve.

There will be a hole in the socket, any pix of a skull will show you the inner curve of bone and a small opening through which the optic nerve passes through into the brain's visual cortex. The bone won't show when the eye is removed since there s a thin covering over the bone.

My friend has a glass eye which is removeable. She has had a plastic and steel 'socket' made that holds it in place, this is permanently attached to the bone socket. She can feel grit or irritants that get into the socket and the tear ducts still work since they feed through the eyelids.

You can certainly survive the entire eye removal without anesthesia. Pain does fade. Damage in war or accident could affect the upper and lower lids. Often an 'empty' eye was sewn up. It's rare but infection could conceivably pass from the eye socket into the brain and spread causing death.
 
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Good luck with this. I had my antagonist gouge someone's eyes out and everyone made me put them back. My betas are no fun :D

I once gouged out someone's eyes...in a book, I mean. But I had a rethink and changed it to cutting out their tongue.
 

Mike Martyn

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On a different note, one of the boys I teach martial arts to hadn't been to class for a couple of months. When he finally came back, I noticed that his left eye looked a little saggy. I joked that he'd got in a fight but it wasn't that.

He'd received a paint ball gun for his birthday and in his excitement, he loaded it and accidently shot himself in he eye with a paint ball, blinbding himself.

Poor kid. Amongst other things, he now terrible problems with depth perception.
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