Woman goes blind for three weeks following tattoo procedure on eyeballs

An Australian woman went blind for three weeks following a tattoo that left the sclera of her eyeballs bright blue.

In an interview with Barcroft TV last month, 24-year-old Amber Luke, of Brisbane, Australia, recalled the moment she felt something go wrong as her tattoo artist carried out the procedure.

"Once the eyeball was penetrated with the ink, it felt like he grabbed 10 shards of glass and rubbed it in my eye," she said. "If your eyeball procedure's done correctly, you're not supposed to go blind at all."

Luke, who estimates she has about 200 tattoos, said she had previously sat through one "major" cosmetic procedure — to have her breasts enlarged — and four minor cosmetic surgeries, in which she had her eyebrows and lips tattooed and received lip and cheek fillers.

Despite her mother's protests, Luke decided to go ahead with her eye tattoo and, in the process, suffered temporary blindness — something she said she doesn't regret.

"Why would you do that to yourself, knowing that there is a — I suppose a danger to it," her mother Vikki questioned. "As we know as the parents, some kids will just do what they want to do, regardless of what we say. But I brought her into the world with the best skills that I could give, the best that I could give her. It's just for me to be there and go along the journey with her and prop her up and love her."

Luke was reportedly diagnosed with severe clinical depression at the age of 15. The next year, she got her first tattoo — an experience she called a form of "negative energy release." Since then, she has become somewhat of an Instagram model. She has nearly 142,000 followers on the social media platform.

"I'm going to say right now that I chose to look this way," she told Barcroft. "And everyone has their own opinions. You know, everyone knows what beauty is in their own eyes."