A DAD’S ‘pink eye’ turned out to be a killer infection that left him looking like Sloth from The Goonies.
Jordan Niles woke up with a sore right eye in late March.
Believing it to be conjunctivitis, he bathed it in sterile water and continued with his day.
But two days later, the airport worker’s eye began to throb and swell up so much it “felt like it was going to explode” and he couldn’t see out of it.
Shocking photos show the dad-of-two’s face swelled up to three times its usual size and his eye half-closed over, leaving him looking like Sloth from 1985 hit movie The Goonies.
Jordan’s wife Courtney Niles urged the 28-year-old to go to the pharmacy, and later the hospital, to get it checked out.
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At A&E Jordan had a CT scan, several eye tests and was hooked up to an antibiotic IV drip, where doctors confirmed he was suffering from serious bacterial infection orbital cellulitis.
Docs said if the infection had spread to the back of his eye it could have cost him his sight.
If it had spread to his brain, it may have potentially cost him his life. they warned.
Now Jordan, who has fully recovered, is sharing his experience to ensure that blokes “listen to their wives” and get anything unusual checked out.
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Jordan, from Bodmin, Cornwall, said: “I woke up on March 24 and had a bit of a sore eye and I thought ‘oh maybe it’s a bit of conjunctivitis’.
“You don’t really do much but clean your eye with sterile water and hope it gets better.
“The next day it was a lot more swollen. My eyelid swelled massively, it felt like my eye was going to explode.
“On day three of it my wife Courtney said to go to the pharmacy, they looked at it and said I needed to go to hospital.
“My face was huge, it was three or four times the size it normally is, I looked like Sloth from The Goonies.
“When the doctors said it was a very serious infection that I could lose my eyesight or worst case scenario die – that’s when I was thinking, ‘oh no, it’s not conjunctivitis then’.
“The doctors said I was very lucky that I went down and got treated before it spread further.
“Courtney’s nagging saved my eyesight.”
After spending the day at Treliske Hospital in Treliske, Cornwall, Jordan was discharged with a week’s worth of antibiotics and was booked in for a follow-up appointment.
Jordan, who was off work for a week due to the infection temporarily blinding him, is now urging people to get anything unusual checked out.
Jordan said: “The hospital said it was a bacterial infection – it could have got through my sinuses or seeped through a pore in my skin.
“That’s the scariest thing about it, in myself I felt OK apart from the pain in my eye.
“I was off work for a week because I couldn’t see out of my eye because the swelling was over the eye.
“My advice to anyone experiencing the same thing is listen to your wife and get it checked out, you can never be too careful.”
Symptoms of orbital cellulitis
Orbital cellulitis is a bacterial infection in the soft tissue surrounding the eye.
It can be dangerous, as increased orbital pressure can cause irreversible loss of vision by obstruction of the optic nerve or retinal blood supply.
Symptoms may include:
- Painful swelling of upper and lower eyelid, and possibly the eyebrow and cheek
- Bulging eyes
- Decreased vision
- Pain when moving the eye
- Fever
- General ill feeling
- Difficulty with eye movements
- Double vision
- Shiny, red or purple eyelid
Source: Mount Sinai
Civil servant Courtney Niles, 25, said: “At first I thought he had conjunctivitis or a stye. He was moaning about it all day – as men do.
“The next day it got a lot worse and I said ‘why don’t you go down to the pharmacy?’
“I’m a panicker and was Googling it all day and it wasn’t getting any better.
“His face was hot to touch and I could see his cheek was swelling a bit more.
“I said to him ‘I think you should go down [to hospital]. You need to get it checked out because you could either go blind or if the worst comes to the worst the children won’t have a dad’. So I made him go the next day.
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“When he rang me from hospital saying they were doing scans and he was on a drip because it had got worse I said ‘I told you, good job you went down’.
“It was a relief really that he went down at the right time.”
