Man has ripped cornea fixed with tooth implant in his eye 10/04/2013 - 00:00 Ian Tibbetts, 43, first damaged his eye 16 years ago when a piece of scrap metal from an oven struck him in the right eye - ripping his cornea in six places. The wound healed and he returned to work a year later but he suffered more problems and eventually lost the sight in his right eye in 1998. And just a year later, the former forklift truck driver had lost nearly all the remaining vision in his left eye.