I was terrified of an eyeball injection

I sympathize, that must be terrible. Your story reminds me of something my wife did a long time ago. She wanted to put sunscreen on our baby daughter's face, and she had the bright idea to blow in her face so she'd close her eyes, and then quickly spritz with the spray.

That worked out exactly like you are probably thinking. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be a resulting phobia, 11 years on.

Makes me shudder...

I had some systemic inflammation behind my retina that would flare up every year or two, causing my retina to warp and make everything look like a fun-house mirror. (At least with the good eye closed... with both open, the brain sorts it all out and provides a good image...)

To reduce the swelling, I needed steroids shots towards the BACK of the eyeball! Speculum goes in, then the doc puts his thumb on the eyeball and rotates it so that I’m looking into my own brain (it seemed) and injects something... aargh!

Didn’t help they he was 76, had shaky hands, and would say things like “now don’t move or you’ll go blind... haha.”

Not all that painful, though... the anesthetic drops numb everything. But, the most disturbing medical experience I’ve had.

(Of course, I’m a guy... I doubt it’s as disturbing as squeezing a baby out of a small orifice in your groin, so there’s that...)

I can relate to this story a bit.

I had an Avastin injection in my eye 10ish years ago in my mid 20s. It turned out that I had a central retinal vein occlusion which caused me to suddenly lose vision in one of my eyes. There was lots of hemorrhaging and swelling of macula which made me lose vision.

One of the suggested ways to treat some of the swelling was by injecting Avastin into my eyes. The ophthalmologist said that there weren't really anything else to do at that point besides to let the eye naturally heal so I did take the chance to take the shot.

I experienced all of that anxiety that the author wrote about as just the thought of a needle injection into the eye is truly gruesome. But what everyone else on here have said is correct in that, they put all this stuff on you, antibiotic drops, anesthetic drops, and betadine and then they have you look up in the upper right hand or upper left hand corner as they inject into the white of your eye.

I remember this being the excruciating part as once the needle goes in, you shouldn't move your eye at all and keep it in that position or risk blindness (as the ophthalmologist put it). What was seconds seemed like minutes. Due to all the anesthesia, you feel no pain but you do feel this discomfort of pressure as the needle gets inserted into the eye.

Thankfully, I only required just one injection but I knew a lot of other elderly with macular degeneration and such who needed these injections regularly in order to not lose vision. The whole process was pretty professional but I don't know if I would want to go through that all again but I know that if it was between that or lose my vision, I think most people would decide to get the injections.

A close relative needed cortisone to manage an eye infection post eye surgery. The insurance stopped paying for the cortisone drops after a while, the only thing they would pay for were injections. The procedure consisted of a large syringe that was used to inject a literal pellet that would float around in the eye and slowly give off cortisone over multiple weeks. My relative said they could sometimes see the pellet float through their eye as it intercepted light on its way to the optical nerve. It manifested as a circular shadow in their field of vision. They called it their "satellite".

The thing that struck me the most, is that a human eye seems to be pretty puncture tolerant before it starts to leak. Also, the insurance's decision is hard to understand: The injections cost $2k compared to a couple hundred for the eye drops. And once the pellet is in, you can't get it out to reduce the dosage.

I’ve had 4 cornea transplants and PRK (like LASIK but no flap). Before I started I was very nervous and sensitive to anything touching my eyes. Now it’s like, whatever, do what you need to do.

The anxiety is worse than the procedures, by far. I don’t have any helpful advice to give; I just toughed it out. The only bad experience I ever had was during my second transplant. They conduct transplants under conscious sedation plus local anesthesia. The sedative puts you to sleep for a few minutes while they nerve block the side of your face with Novocaine and then they wake you up a little for the procedure. I found the procedure profoundly disturbing psychologically even though I was in no discomfort. They use a trephine (like a small razor sharp cookie cutter) to remove your cornea; you’re awake and can sorta see it. It makes squishy noises. Your vision skews all over and then goes really blurry and you realize that there’s nothing but gravity keeping the insides of your eye in. After that I always asked the anesthesiologist to sedate me just to the point where I was unconscious or at least not aware/lucid.

Most doctors are very caring people and used to addressing anxiety. Maybe not surgeons so much, at least in my experience.