Woman had to have eye removed after struggling to see Beyoncé on TV
A woman who thought her blurry vision while watching a concert on TV was because of a hangover eventually got diagnosed with something more serious that ended up costing her an eye.
Back in October 2022, 28-year-old Jade Windley was trying to watch a Beyoncé concert on TV when she couldn't see the backup dancers properly, figuring she'd just had more wine than wisdom dictates the night before.
"I was at my friend's house and was watching a Beyoncé concert and I couldn't see the backing dancers. I thought 'maybe I've just had a bit too much wine the night before and I'll sleep it off'," the Sheffield woman said.
"My friend brought up this test about 'how to tell if you have a detached retina'. I didn't understand why I'd have this but I couldn't see this black dot [on the test] so I took myself to the opticians.
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"They offered me a scan for my eye. I thought 'this is stupid, I've just been on the wine'."
She got herself into Specsavers for a check-up the next day and that's when optometrists told her she'd better get to hospital, telling her 'you need to get yourself to A&E right now'.
A 'confused and baffled' Jade made it to hospital where she was told she had a non-cancerous tumour in her right eye which could cost the woman her vision.
After her diagnosis she received six injections into her eye, was put on a course of steroids and sent through radiotherapy in October 2025.
The vision in her eye had decreased until all she could see was a 'tiny bit of light', and once she'd been through radiotherapy she'd tried to start up her life again until she getting headaches again.
Jade said: "I didn't talk to anybody about it but I was in pain, your gut knows but I didn't want to accept that."
"Needing surgery to have my eye removed wasn't what I was expecting to hear. By this point I'd gone completely blind [in that eye] and it was painful, I was throwing up all the time at work."
A friend was picking her up and waking her home from her job managing a charity shop, and in March this year she was told there was a second tumour and her eye would have to be removed.
On 5 August she underwent surgery to remove her eye, and for now is wearing an ocular conformer, a plastic shell inside her eye that keeps the socket's shape so a prosthetic eye can be fitted.
She's learning to 'find love for the eye hole' as an eyepatch results in a lot of questions that make it difficult to leave the house, and adjusting to the loss of vision and depth perception has been difficult.
She said: "You don't know what's on that side, you're jumpier, you have to completely change how you view your life."
Jade has also been suffering from Charles Bonnet syndrome, a condition that causes hallucinations.
In the long run she's 'grateful' she went for the check-up and has been trying to encourage others to get themselves checked if they think something isn't right.
"If I hadn't gone to Specsavers that day I might not have found out for months or years," she said.
"Go and get checked out and spend the extra tenner to have the back of your eye checked."
She's set up a GoFundMe page which you can donate to here, as she wants to get a fancy looking prosthetic eye.
Joe Harker