Hey, Did Any of You Try to Put Sunscreen on Your Eyeballs For the Eclipse?

Thought it couldn't get any worse than the President's direct gaze when it came to Monday's total solar eclipse? Think again. According to one nurse practitioner, it wasn't just people worried about eclipse blindness who showed up at the doctor in the wake of the special event. Some people, it seemed, had applied sunscreen directly to their eyeballs in hopes of being able to look to the skies without risking the sun's wrath.

Redding, CA-based NP Trish Patterson shared the details about what she had heard in the days following the eclipse with news station KRCR. According to the report, multiple patients at her urgent care clinic who didn't have eclipse glasses on hand apparently instead chose to smear sunblock in their eyes. "One of my colleagues . . . had patients presenting at their clinic that put sunscreen on their eyeballs and presented that they were having pain, and they were referred to an ophthalmologist."

Naturally, you might be inclined to rose-tint the situation. Maybe these people just applied a lot of sunscreen to their face and then had a rather sweaty experience watching the eclipse in the late morning heat. The sweat might have caused the sunscreen to run into their eyes, and the rest is self-explanatory from there. Here's what I'll say, as someone who has accidentally experienced the whole sweat-and-sunscreen-in-my-eye situation: it's a pretty easy remedy. It would take a lot of sunscreen and pain and prolonged symptoms for me to see a doctor. And how could a person come in contact with so much sunscreen and pain? I think you can guess. Let's all put the sunscreen away, get rid of those eclipse glasses, and never speak of this again.