A law student and mother who tattooed her eyeballs blue and purple says she’s now going blind from the procedure.
Anaya Peterson, a law student based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, decided to get the procedure done after admiring Australian alternative model Amber Luke’s tattooed eyes.
“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 told Kennedy News, according to the New York Post.
Now, according to the The Mirror, the woman is reportedly at risk of going completely 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’m kind of recovered — on the outside, it’s recovered. It’s just inside. I’m basically on the verge of going blind,” Peterson shared.
Peterson first tattooed her right eye blue in July 2020. After the procedure, she experienced minor symptoms such as dryness and headaches. In December that same year, she got her left eye tattooed purple.
By August 2021, both of Peterson’s eyes had swelled up so much she wished that she had listened to her 7-year-old daughter who was allegedly “not on board with it at all.”
Peterson claims she was hospitalized for three days after the swelling began, and is now at risk of developing severe cataracts.
Peterson’s inspiration, Amber Luke, experienced similar complications after undergoing the same procedure in 2019. According to news.com.au, Luke went blind for three weeks after her 40-minute tattoo session.
According to the Australian news outlet, after Luke found out about Peterson, the model posted a note to social media expressing her “heartbreak.”
“I am so sorry to hear this has happened — but also I’m heartbroken knowing someone did this to achieve a similar result to me and now they’re losing their sight forever. I just want to make it very clear — I never did this to myself to ‘influence’ anyone to do the same,” Luke said, per the Australian news outlet.
“I did all of this for me and I did it to reinvent myself into someone I could be proud of being and looking. I wanted to lead and inspire — but I also let y’all know the insane risks to this as well like how I went blind for three weeks. This woman is losing her sight forever. Do your research! I will preach it now until I die,” she added.
However, even if Peterson could turn back time, she would apparently still get at least one eyeball inked.
“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,” she told Kennedy News.
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