A little girl has been left blind in one eye after an horrific freak accident involving her scooter. She was walking to nursery school with her mum when it happened.
Amanda Allan, 39, a mum of three, was walking with four-year-old Coral scooting alongside her on June 23 when Coral crashed. As she did, the end of the scooter's handlebars jabbed into her left eye.
Amanda said it didn't appear too severe at first. There was no bleeding, she said, and Coral wasn't in pain. However, her eye looked swollen, so they went home and Amanda kept an eye on her little girl.
As time went on, Coral said it felt like something was stuck in her eye and her sight had got blurry, reports the Mirror. By the next morning she said that she couldn't see out of it at all.
Worried, Amanda and Coral's dad, Ryan, 29, took her to her local optician. They were told it was serious and they should go straight to hospital.
Amanda, a hairdresser, said: "The situation has developed so quickly, from the accident to where we are now. When Coral fell she seemed a bit shaken and her eye looked slightly sore, but she reassured me she wasn't in any pain.
"Throughout the day I kept asking her if she could see OK and at first she said she could. It wasn't until later her vision started to blur, and in the morning when she woke up, she couldn't see at all. Hearing the concern in the optician's voice is every mum's worst nightmare - it was so worrying."
On their arrival at hospital, Amanda was informed that her daughter would need emergency surgery to stitch together multiple lacerations on her eye ball. Coral was transferred to Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Children, where she was then operated on the same afternoon.
Despite the severity of her injury, she is still not in any pain, and post surgery signs are looking promising. But Coral's vision is still hugely impaired and she will have to have another operation in the next few weeks after doctors have monitored her progress.
Amanda said: "The eye specialists operated on Coral and now she is wearing a huge glass contact lens to protect the stitches. They've told us they're going to do the best they can to get her vision fully back, but she'll likely need several operations in the future
"And, it's unlikely that we'll see the results of her recent operations for six to eight months because her wounds need time to heal. We're still trying to get our heads round how this has happened. We haven't slept for a week worrying about the long lasting effects this could have on our daughter."
Doctors have laid out a worst case scenario for Coral which would see her blind in one eye for the rest of her life. Amanda is keen to raise awareness of the risks every day activities can pose and to promote the wider use of eye protection amongst children.
"This situation has made us see the dangers that surround our children on a daily basis," she said. "We want to raise awareness for this kind of incident so other parents don't have to suffer what we're now going through.
"We have learnt our lesson, and in the future my kids will be wearing goggles when doing activities which pose a risk to their optic health. I'm praying Coral will turn a corner soon and that this accident won't hang over her for the rest of her life - but we'll just have to wait and see."
