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EYE OPENER

Woman Reveals Shocking Injury From Freak Nerf-Gun Accident

A split-second incident turned into a four-month medical ordeal.

Tamilore OshikanluBreaking News Intern

PublishedJun 2, 2026, 5:26 PM EDT

UpdatedJun 2, 2026, 5:26 PM EDT

Updated Jun 2, 2026, 5:26 PM EDTPublished Jun 2, 2026, 5:26 PM EDT

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What should have been a harmless Nerf gun battle turned into a four-month medical nightmare for one babysitter.

Sarah Bell, 23, has been documenting her recovery on TikTok after a Nerf foam dart struck her directly in the eye while she was watching a child in January. The dart was fired from roughly 7 to 10 feet away, but the damage was severe enough to send her to the emergency room and leave her with lingering vision problems months later.

At first, Bell thought she had simply taken a painful hit to the eye. But on the drive home, she realized something was seriously wrong.

“I didn’t realize how serious it was until I was driving home and noticed the light bothered me badly, and all I could see was white/cloudiness,” Bell told People. “The pain was severe, and my eye watered constantly.”

In a TikTok video chronicling the ordeal, Bell shared a photo showing her eye red, swollen, and visibly irritated shortly after the accident. About 30 minutes later, she wrote, she could see only white from the injured eye “like a cloud was covering it.”

As the cloudiness spread across her vision, panic set in.

Bell rushed to the emergency room, where she said doctors initially couldn’t identify the problem. She was later referred to an ophthalmologist, who discovered the injury was far more serious than anyone realized.

The impact had caused significant internal damage, plummeting her vision from 20/20 to 20/70, she told the outlet.

According to Bell, doctors found a hole between her iris and cornea and bruising inside her eye. The subsequent damage interfered with normal fluid drainage and prevented her pupils from returning to equal size.

Photos posted by Bell showed the alarming progression of the injury. In several images, her pupil appeared dramatically enlarged, swallowing most of the iris and giving her eye a startling appearance.

Doctors prescribed steroid eye drops along with medication intended to help restore her pupils to the same size, she told the outlet.

The treatment worked—at least partially. Within a few weeks, Bell said her vision had largely returned to normal, but the recovery was far from immediate.

“Things were blurry for about two months due to the dilation issue,” she told People.

Life, meanwhile, kept moving.

Roughly a week after the accident, Bell started a new job while still dealing with the injury. One photo included in her TikTok showed her noticeably enlarged pupil staring back at the camera as she navigated her first days at work.

While her eyesight has since returned to 20/20, Bell says the accident left lasting effects.

“I’ve still got one pupil .6 mm bigger than the other but vision is 20/20,” she wrote in response to commenters who assumed her eye had fully healed.

Aside from the glaring visual difference to her eye, Bell said she continues to experience irritation months later.

“Sunlight and some LED lights still make that eye water,” Bell told People.

Despite the frightening ordeal, Bell has resisted calls from commenters urging her to take legal action against the family of the child who fired the dart.

“The kid genuinely [was] sorry. He dropped the gun immediately,” she wrote, later adding that after an apology from the boy’s parents, she didn’t have the heart to tell them how severe the injury became.

Bell appears to be taking the experience in stride. Tagging Nerf in the post, she joked: “@nerf love you still don’t worry just with goggle now.”

Her cautionary tale echoes Nerf’s existing warning on its packaging, which informs users on how to “avoid eye injury” by urging them to wear protective eyewear and specifically cautions against aiming at a person’s eyes or face.

Tamilore OshikanluBreaking News Intern

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