Woman Who Tattooed Her Eyeballs Blue And Purple 'On The Verge Of Going Blind'

A woman in Northern Ireland could potentially go blind after she tattooed her eyeballs blue and purple, despite her 7-year-old daughter's advice not to get the ink as she may lose her eyesight.

Anaya Peterson, a 32-year-old mother of five, said she is slowly losing her eyesight following the eyeball modification, the New York Post reported.

She said she was hospitalized after suffering a potential reaction to the ink and claimed she is currently at risk of developing cataracts.

"I was just going to get one [eye tattoo] at first, because I thought that if I go blind, at least I've got the other eye. I should have stuck with that," Peterson told Kennedy News. "My daughter told me that I didn't want to do that [the tattoo] asking, 'What if you go blind?' She wasn't on board with it at all."

The Belfast-based law student said she now has a hard time seeing features on faces from a distance.

"I don't have 20/20 vision anymore. From a distance, I can't see features on faces," she said. "If I didn't have my eyeballs tattooed, I wouldn't be having this problem. Even today I woke up with more floaters in my eyes. And that is dangerous."

Several months after tattooing her right eye blue in July 2020, she experienced no major complications. Later that December, despite suffering from dryness and headaches, she decided to tattoo her left eyeball purple.

However, in August 2021, Peterson woke up one day with swollen eyelids. She said it was as though her "face had been inflated with air" and looked like she had done "five rounds with Mike Tyson," Daily Mail reported.

As the symptoms worsened, she decided to check herself into the hospital, where doctors gave her eye medication for three days and biopsied her eye.

"I just wanted to be at home watching [TV] to be honest. I can't even put it into words. It wasn't nice at all whatsoever," she said, according to the New York Post, adding that it was traumatizing and that she regrets her decision to tattoo the whites of her eyes.

Peterson said she left the hospital "on the mend" but was now "on the verge of going blind."

"I'm kind of recovered — on the outside, it's recovered. It's just inside. I'm basically on the verge of going blind," she said. "If I could go back in time, I would have done one black [eye tattoo] and left it. I would have done one black. Absolutely."

Still, Peterson remains positive despite the negative comments she's received online.

"I tell my daughter not to care about the opinions of someone else because they're just ordinary people like you," Peterson, who also has a tongue split and facial tattoos, said. "You have positive comments and negative comments, but the negative comments always overshadow the positive ones."

Peterson was inspired by Australian model and influencer Amber Luke, who also got her eyeballs tattooed and went temporarily blind for three weeks after.

Luke previously told the Daily Star that an eyeball tattoo should never result in blindness if done appropriately. "Unfortunately, my artist went too deep into my eyeball," she said.