More often than not, Dr. Patrick Tracey said the scenario unfolds like this: A patient wakes up and makes their way to the mirror, where they notice their eye has suddenly, and inexplicably, turned an unsettling shade of red.
They call his office in a panic.
“They come in,” he said, “and sure enough, it’s just a subconjunctival hemorrhage.”
Advertisement
The term found its way into the spotlight — an unsettling red spotlight — on Wednesday night when Montreal Canadiens defenceman Jeff Petry returned to the ice for Game 2 of his team’s playoff series with the Vegas Golden Knights. The focus was supposed to be on his injured right hand, but it landed instead on his eyes.
They were both a deep blood red, a look possibly made even more dramatic by the bright lights of the arena. Television cameras relayed the images, and social media shuddered. Goaltender Carey Price — a man who chooses his words carefully — called the eyes “scary-looking.” A Sportsnet reporter on the scene relayed word of the diagnosed hemorrhage.
Tracey is an optometrist who works with the Toronto Argonauts, and has a background with both the San Jose Sharks and then-Oakland Raiders. He said the condition is not nearly as frightening as it looks or sounds.
Jeff Petry's eyes are legitimately bloodshot pic.twitter.com/lhB73LoJOT
— Omar (@TicTacTOmar) June 17, 2021
“If you happen to break a little blood vessel on the white part of the eye — and if it bleeds — it just spreads,” he said. “It’s like putting ink on a flat surface and then putting a piece of plastic on top of it. It will just spread underneath it.”
He chuckled.
“It looks like something out of a horror movie,” he said. “But it’s pretty innocuous and not really an issue.”
Petry did not offer much insight during a conversation with reporters. The 33-year-old missed Game 1 of the best-of-seven Stanley Cup semifinal series with an undisclosed hand injury. He caught his right hand in the glass — in a cutout meant for a photographer’s lens — in Game 3 of the previous series, a sweep of the Winnipeg Jets.
His wife, Julie, addressed his eyes on social media. In a post on Instagram, she wrote it was not due to allergies, fatigue or the result of a “couple nights in Vegas.”
Advertisement
“All related to his ‘upper body injury,’” she wrote. “But let me tell you he looks a lot better than he did a week ago.”
Depending on just how much bleeding was involved, Tracey said the condition will tend to settle down with help from gravity. He said the blood would eventually be absorbed into the surrounding tissue and that the red would fade, likely turning light yellow before returning to normal.
A person could take a week or two to completely recover.
“We see it in elderly people who may be on blood thinners and who maybe strain too hard when they’re on the toilet, or they sneeze too hard or cough too hard,” he said. “If you’re sick to your stomach and you retch, that sudden pressure surge can break a little blood vessel on the eye.”
Tracey, who practises out of Queensway Optometric Centre, in Mississauga, Ont., said the hemorrhage does not cause pain. He said it would not impede a player’s vision on the ice.
“It has no effect whatsoever on the functioning of his eyes,” he said. “He will see. The vision will be unaffected. His eye movements will be unaffected. It really is no issue.”
There was still the potential for it to become an issue for the father of young children, though.
“Kids were at school when I came home,” Petry said, as relayed by The Canadian Press. “(They) didn’t want to look at me and decided that I would be the villain and they’d be the super heroes and we started playing.
“That got them to relax and feel a little bit more comfortable.”
Fans celebrate hockey players who skate with stitches in their face and aches in their bones. Why was there such a commotion over the state of his eyes?
“It’s just the psychology of your eyes, and how important your vision is to you,” said Tracey. “If you suddenly look in the mirror one day, and the whole half of the white part of your eye is beet red, then you’re thinking, ‘What on earth is happening here?’”
Advertisement
It could happen to a football player, he said, if an opponent’s finger slipped through their facemask and poked them in the eye. In hockey, it could be caused by a high stick — though the consequences of that could be much more severe.
“If I look at the players on the ice, and I look at the position of those visors, they’re up so high — their eyes are not protected,” said Tracey. “I really worry about that. And my god, if I was the owner of the team, it’s just basic workplace safety.”
And a subconjunctival hemorrhage?
“It just looks like hell,” he said. “But it doesn’t really pose any problem.”
(Top photo: Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Today)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kW9scW1iaXxzfJFqZmluX2aEcLbEn51mqJWpv7p5wpqlmpyZmru0ecSynKxlo6qvpLvNo6ynm6Sew6K4jKGcpqeip7Wis8Ro