A dad has claimed his wife’s ‘nagging’ ended up saving his life after his sore eye ended up being a deadly infection.
When Jordan Niles woke up with an inflamed eye on March 25, he believed it to be simply be a case of conjunctivitis, and continued with his day after bathing it in sterile water. But just two days later, the airport worker’s eye began to throb and swell up so much he “felt like it was going to explode” – and left him temporarily blinded. Shocking photos show how the dad-of-two’s face ballooned to three times its usual size, and left his eye half-closed over.
Jordan’s wife Courtney Niles urged the 28-year-old to go to the pharmacy to get it checked out, and when it continued to get worse, told him to go to the hospital. Reluctantly, he went to A&E, where had a CT scan, several eye tests and was hooked up to an antibiotic IV drip.
There, doctors confirmed he was suffering from a serious bacterial infection called orbital cellulitis. Docs said if the infection had spread to the back of his eye it could have cost him his sight – and if it had spread to his brain, potentially his life.
Now Jordan, who has fully recovered, is sharing his experience to encourage men ‘listen to their wives’ about health concernsand get anything unusual checked out. Jordan, from Bodmin, Cornwall, said: “I woke up on [March 24] and had a bit of a sore eye and I thought ‘oh maybe it’s a bit of conjunctivitis’.
“You don’t really do much but clean your eye with sterile water and hope it gets better. The next day it was a lot more swollen. My eyelid swelled massively, it felt like my eye was going to explode. “On day three of it my wife Courtney said to go to the pharmacy, they looked at it and said I needed to go to hospital. “My face was huge, it was three or four times the size it normally is, I looked like Sloth from The Goonies.
“When the doctors said it was a very serious infection that I could lose my eyesight or worst case scenario die – that’s when I was thinking, ‘oh no, it’s not conjunctivitis then’. The doctors said I was very lucky that I went down and got treated before it spread further. Courtney’s nagging saved my eyesight.”
After spending the day at Treliske Hospital in Treliske, Cornwall, Jordan was discharged with a week’s worth of antibiotics and was booked in for a follow-up appointment. Jordan, who was off work for a week due to the infection temporarily blinding him, added: “My advice to anyone experiencing the same thing is listen to your wife and get it checked out, you can never be too careful.”
His wife, civil servant Courtney Niles, 25, said: “At first I thought he had conjunctivitis or a stye. He was moaning about it all day – as men do.The next day it got a lot worse and I said ‘why don’t you go down to the pharmacy?’ “I’m a panicker and was Googling it all day and it wasn’t getting any better. His face was hot to touch and I could see his cheek was swelling a bit more.
“I said to him ‘I think you should go down [to hospital]. You need to get it checked out because you could either go blind or if the worst comes to the worst the children won’t have a dad’. So I made him go the next day.
“When he rang me from hospital saying they were doing scans and he was on a drip because it had got worse I said ‘I told you, good job you went down’. It was a relief [too] really that he went down at the right time.”
According to the NHS, orbital cellulitis is an infection in the soft tissue surrounding the eye. It can cause redness and swelling around the eye and eyelids, an inability to open the eye and pain and discomfort. If not treated, it can obstruct the optic nerve or retinal blood supply, causing a permanent loss of eyesight.
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