Whoa Subconjunctival Hemorrhage!

Friday morning I noticed the outside of my wife’s eye looked red. I mentioned it to her and she said she hadn’t noticed.

Of course she went to the mirror and examined her eye. “Whoa!!!” she said, “What happened to my eye?!?!”

I looked closer and it looked like there was a tiny moon shaped scratch on the white of her eye (sclera). She didn’t remember scratching it, rubbing it, or doing anything that might have caused it to become irritated.

We took a picture and decided we would keep an eye on it. Hahaha, no pun intended.

It had only been a few hours, but it was evident around lunchtime that her eye was looking worse. We talked about what we should do and agreed that she should go see our ophthalmologist here in town.

The doctor was able to see her within the hour, and even the doctor was surprised with how my wife’s eye looked and presented. She put some dye in my wife’s eye to ensure there weren’t any punctures (which there weren’t), and she said it was clearly a subconjuctival hemorrhage.

Essentially, a subconjuctival hemorrhage is bleeding in your eye, in between the conjuctiva and the sclera.

According to WebMd (2017), the conjunctiva is the thin, moist, transparent membrane that covers the white part of the eye, the sclera. The conjunctiva is the outermost protective coating of the eyeball.

It contains nerves and many small blood vessels. These blood vessels are somewhat fragile, and their walls may break easily, resulting in a subconjunctival hemorrhage (bleeding under the conjunctiva).

Most subconjuctival hemorrhages have no identifiable cause. That’s right, they just randomly appear. For some reason, one of those fragile blood vessels decides to break and you are left with a bleeding eye.

Other causes may include eye rubbing, sneezing/coughing, straining while vomiting, straining while using the toilet, trauma, high blood pressure, and/or a bleeding disorder. Essentially, anything that can cause a change in pressure in those little tiny, fragile blood vessels.

The doctor told my wife that for the most part, subconjuctival hemorrhages are mostly harmless and resolve on their own in 1-2 weeks. She told my wife to expect the bleeding to continue to spread in the white of her eye over the next few days, and then as her eye absorbed the blood over the next week, expect her eye to turn yellow before returning to normal.

But mostly harmless, isn’t completely harmless. My wife wanted to know what to watch for over the next few days to make sure her subconjuctival hemorrhage was healing properly.

Basically, subconjuctival hemorrhages shouldn’t cause any changes in your vision, they shouldn’t be painful, there shouldn’t be blood in your tears, and they shouldn’t last more than 2 weeks. Her ophthalmologist told her to return to her office if she noticed any of those symptoms.

This was the first time either of us had dealt with a subconjuctival hemorrhage, although apparently they are quite common. My wife posted on her personal Facebook page yesterday about the ordeal and so many of her friends commented about having similar experiences. One of our buddies even said he had one for over a year before he finally had it cauterized to get rid of it for good.

So yeah, they don’t look very good, but they are mostly harmless and will go away on there own. If you do happen to get one, just remember to watch for those few symptoms we just mentioned and if any of them occur, please seek medical attention.

Cheers.