Woman’s scary
eye injury has a
miraculous ending

After both eyelids are punctured
by a rebar, her eyeball amazingly
does not suffer harm

---

By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Molokai High School's 10th senior class reunion was an unforgettable event for Shannon Lima, who ended up on an air ambulance to Honolulu with a 2-foot-long metal bar in her left eye.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Dr. George Plechaty, ophthalmologist called by the Queen's Medical Center's emergency room to perform surgery.

The reinforcement bar, about a half-inch in diameter, had penetrated Lima's lower and upper eyelids, he said. "It went up and down vertically."

It is hard to imagine without seeing it, he said.

Amazingly, the bar did not touch the 27-year-old woman's eye, he said. "I thought I was going to be dealing with a perforated eyeball. I ended up having to deal with two shredded eyelids."

Lima said the reunion was held at a family home in Kalamaula near Coconut Grove about a month and a half ago.

She said it was late at night, and people were cleaning up and dancing under a tent in the yard.

"I walked out of the tent into a dark area, thinking I knew the yard, and I ended up tripping and I fell. When I opened my eyes, only one eye opened. ... I didn't know what was happening. When I blinked my eye, I thought I was dying.

"Everyone was freaking out around me. I was telling them, 'Calm down. Call 911. I'm going to be OK.'"

Lima said she did not feel anything but put her hand up to see what was wrong with her eye and discovered a rebar, a metal bar used in construction, in her face.

The bar had been sticking up about four feet from the ground holding a board for a shelf that someone had removed, she said, explaining it was in an area where no one was expected to go.

She felt safe walking into the yard in the dark because she helped set up everything for the reunion and knew where everything was, she said.

But she tripped and fell straight down on the rebar, she said. "I was on my hands and knees in the gravel. The bar went through my eye and was right on my chest."

Molokai paramedics cut the bar, leaving about two feet attached to her eye. She held it on the flight to the emergency room.

The paramedics tried to make it more comfortable with padding, she said, "but I didn't want them to be touching it. I could feel the pressure."

Otherwise, she said she felt no pain. "The worst thing about it was when they gave me an IV when I got into the ambulance. That's when I screamed. My classmates were going nuts because they could hear me."

The accident occurred about 11:30 p.m., and Lima arrived at Queen's emergency room about 1:30 a.m. where she was seen by Dr. Wiley Brunel. "I was more exhausted and tired than really paying attention to what was going on," she said.

Called in about 4 a.m., Plechaty said, "We couldn't really even open the eye because the bar actually was stapling ... the eyelids shut and forcing them together, and she could not open the eye."

"It was really a dramatic thing," he said, describing how it had punctured her lower lid and entered the inside of her upper lid, where it came out.

"We were initially concentrating on the concept of removing the bar and examining how much damage there was to the eye," he said.

The Fire Department was called to use the Jaws of Life to try to snip the bar as close as possible to where it entered, he said, "and we had bolt cutters ready."

While his back was turned, Plechaty said, anesthesiologist Kenneth Kern said he thought as soon as he put Lima under anesthesia, her eyelid would be loosened, and possibly they could pull the bar out.

"As I turned, the nurse was irrigating the wound, and he was gently pulling the bar. He had pulled it about six inches. I pulled out the rest."

Examining her eye, Plechaty said, "I could see a normal iris that was round and a normal cornea that was round and intact. I said, 'Holy Toledo.'"

Even though the globe of her eye was OK, Plechaty said three hours of careful stitching were required to repair damaged eye muscles.

Lima said everyone in her big family, as well as close friends, flew to Honolulu to visit her in the hospital. "When I opened my eye, I said, 'What's happening? Why is everybody here?'"

Recently at Plechaty's office for a checkup, Lima said a fever was the worst problem she had from the injury. She has little pains now "like pinpricks because of the healing," she said.

She did not think she would be able to open her eye because "it was really swollen shut," she said. But she was able to open it all the way in about a week and a half. "It healed super fast," she said.

Lima stayed with family members on Oahu for about a month, seeing the doctor every other day, then returned home where she is coordinator for Na Pua Noeau, a center for gifted and talented Hawaiian children.

She said some people ask her, "'Are you sure you got into an accident?' When they look at me good, where it was, they kind of see it. It looks like a mosquito bite right under the eyelid."