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Hear from Matthew Cairns and his mum Mandy Blake

by Martin Jefferies

A Ramsgate mum is demanding a personal apology after hospital
staff accidentally glued her son's eye shut.

The painful drama unfolded when Mandy Blake took 14-year-old
Matthew to the QEQM hospital, Margate, concerned about a small head
wound that had been bleeding for four hours. He suffered the injury
while playing sports at his school, the Marlowe Academy in
Ramsgate.

Nurses chose to use medical glue instead of stiches to close the
cut because of its small size but mistakedly dropped some of the
liquid onto Matthew's eye lashes.

The teenager, who has autism, was taken to a treatment room,
where his mum claimed staff spent three hours trying to free his
eye. He eventually left the hospital at 11pm but was off school all
week.

Mrs Blake said: "The nurses were using saline to try and open
Matthew's eye and he was really frightened. It's the first time he
can remember being in hospital and I'm worried he'll be too scared
to go back there again.

"As soon as we left the hospital, he went into shock and had
trouble breathing. But he wouldn't let us take him back to A&E;
he just wanted to go home."

Mrs
Blake said her previous experience of treatment at the QEQM,
pictured left, had been positive but is angry because she
claims no-one at the hospital apologised for her son's ordeal
immediately.

A spokesperson for the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the QEQM, said: "This is always an extremely difficult procedure, especially in children, because it is difficult to get them to stay still. We know it can be very distressing for the child and apologise for any discomfort caused."

The hospital spokesperson said Mrs Blake had been told to remove
a dressing covering Matthew's eye within 24 hours to prevent the
eye drying out.

But Mrs Blake said her son's eye was still weeping on Monday.
She explained her GP had advised her to keep the patch in place for
as long as Matthew felt comfortable.