Review is 20/20.
A mother-of-five brushed off her daughter’s advice not to get her eyeballs tattooed because of potential blindness – and now she’s losing her sight.
Anaya Peterson, a law student, was in awe of Australian model Amber Luke, who tattooed her eyeballs a bright blue and then went blind for three weeks. Though Luke is regaining her sight, it seems 32-year-old Peterson could lose her sight forever.
“I was just about to get one [eye tattoo] At first because I thought if I went blind I would at least have the other eye. I should have stuck with it,” Peterson told Kennedy News. “My daughter told me I didn’t want it [the tattoo] ask, “What if you go blind?” She wasn’t on board at all.”
The body modification enthusiast has a forked tongue and numerous tattoos — but inking her eyes might have been a step too far. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
Now she wishes she had listened to her wise 7-year-old. The woman, who lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was taken to hospital after a possible reaction to the ink from the eyeball modification and now claims she is at risk of developing cataracts.
“I no longer have a 20/20 vision. I can’t see facial features from afar,” she said. “If I hadn’t tattooed my eyeballs, I wouldn’t have this problem. Also today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous.”
Peterson said her daughter tried to warn her about her sight loss, but she didn’t listen. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
She will “always have this problem” as she can’t remove tattoo ink in her eyes.
But her harrowing tattoo history didn’t have such a rocky start — after getting her right eye tattooed blue in July 2020, she had no complications for months. Despite suffering from dryness and headaches, in December of the same year she decided to tattoo her left eyeball purple.
She woke up one morning with a swollen face and eyelids. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
It was the result of a possible reaction to the ink. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
The worst happened in August 2021. She woke up one day with incredibly swollen eyelids that looked like she’d gone “five rounds with Mike Tyson.” As symptoms worsened, she decided to take herself to the hospital, where doctors gave her intravenous medication for three days and biopsied her problematic eye.
“I just wanted to be home and watch [TV] honestly. I can’t even put it into words. It wasn’t pretty at all,” she recalled. “It was traumatizing going through that. I just remember thinking, ‘I’m not going to do that eye tattoo again. I’m definitely not doing that again.’ “
Now Peterson says she has floaters in her vision and is at risk of blindness. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
The body modification enthusiast left the hospital “on the mend” but regrets her decision to even tattoo the whites of her eyes.
“I’m sort of recovered – outwardly it’s recovered. It’s just in there. I’m basically going blind,” she said. “If I could turn back time, I would have made a black man [eye tattoo] and left it. I would have made one black. Absolutely.”
She originally only had one eye tattooed blue, inspired by an Australian model. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
Despite the bleak outlook, Peterson remains positive in the face of negative comments she’s receiving online.
“I tell my daughter not to care about other people’s opinions because they’re just normal people like you,” she said. “You have positive comments and negative comments, but the negative comments always overshadow the positive ones.”
Her “traumatizing” hospital experience has left her with tattoo regrets. Kennedy News/inkedup_britishjama
According to Peterson’s inspiration, Australian influencer Luke, an eyeball tattoo should never lead to blindness if done right.
“Unfortunately, my artist got too deep into my eyeball,” she previously told the Daily Star of losing her sight for three weeks. “If your eyeball procedure is done correctly, you shouldn’t go blind at all.”