A mum-of-five has said that she regrets not listening to her seven-year-old daughter who warned that she could go blind if she got her eyeballs tattooed.
Law student Anaya Peterson, 32, is now losing her sight after she chose to tattoo her eyeballs blue and purple.
She was inspired by “blue-eyed dragon” Amber Luke, an Australian model who got her eyeballs inked blue in 2019 – before going temporarily blind for three weeks.
Anaya, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, was left hospitalised following the eye alteration and is facing permanent blindness after a suspected reaction to the eyeball ink.
The mum, who also has a tongue split and facial tattoos, now says she wishes she could have done things differently.
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 though her “face had been inflated with air”.
As the swelling continued to get worse despite taking antibiotics, Anaya checked herself into the hospital’s A&E ward.
Anaya claims that her daughter India was never on board with the eye tattoo, as she feared that her mum would “go blind”
Anaya said: “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 traumatising 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.”
The ordeal has left Anaya regretting her choice to follow in the footsteps of Amber Luke.
Anaya has been 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”.
The student claims she is being supported by her university and is being provided with applications to make reading easier, as well as counselling.
Anaya said: “I’m kind of recovered – on the outside, it’s recovered. It’s just inside. I’m basically on the verge of going blind.
“I don’t have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance I can’t see features on faces.
“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.
“I can’t get these eye tattoos out. I’m always going to have this problem. So, I basically think that as I get older, it’s just best to let me go blind.
“When I’m 60 or 70, I don’t want to have to go to the eye doctor every two or three days.
“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.
“I tell my daughter not to care about the opinions of someone else because they’re just ordinary people like you.
“You have positive comments and negative comments, but the negative comments always overshadow the positive ones.”
