How to Treat a Black Eye (Bruise)

Video Transcript

"Your child's just come in and they're crying because they were out rough housing or maybe they were playing baseball and they've gotten hit in the eye and it looks a little bit red right now but you're concerned about it turning into a black eye and you want to know what to do. Well, the first thing to do for treating a black eye is to put some cold on it and what you would do, you could use one of these instant cold packs if you have a first aid kit that has one of those. You just press it until it pops and then it will immediately get cold, or perhaps you even have something that in your freezer that you could use or you could take ice cubes, crushed ice and put them in a baggie. Anything like that and just hold it on the eye, and a little bit of pressure is okay, but you don't want to put a ton of pressure on someone's eye, so just kind of make sure it's there and it's secure and that cold will help reduce the blood flow to the eye and if you're reducing the blood flow, you'll reduce the amount of bleeding that happens because what's happened in a black eye is that probably a little capillary or maybe even a venial, something like that, has broken and then that blood's gone into the tissues. Just to be aware, probably that black eye's going to take a good week to totally go away and be, it'll go from, you know, kind of pink to red, and then it will turn real interesting shades of yellow and blue and green, maybe, even, before it leaves, so don't worry about that. It's the normal process. You know, sometimes you can cover that up with a little pancake make up if the persons willing to do that. In someone that is older, of course, children should never take aspirin, but an adult taking aspirin would avoid taking aspirin for a day or so because aspirin would thin your blood and make you less likely to clot and what you want is for the bleeding to stop and to then be absorbed into your body.So basically, a cold compress is your first strategy for dealing with a black eye. My name is Beverly Bitterman, Health and Wellness consultant and I hope that it goes away soon."