Skip to main content

A Nail In The Eye

Today, as I was dropping Ben off at the bus stop to go to class, he had a little accident. He has this cross necklace that he never, ever takes off. A while back the cord broke and the only brown cord I could find that would fit through the catch was a stretchy elastic cord. So today, he was brushing the dog hair off his shirt when his ring caught on the cross. As he looked down to see what his ring was caught on, the cross came loose, snapped back on the stretchy elastic cord and hit him right in the eye.

"Ow!" he was laughing as he rubbed his eye and told me what had happened. His eye was watering profusely.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "Let me look."

"No, I'm fine, it just hurt. There's my bus!" He headed off toward the bus as I drove off. I could see him still rubbing his eye.

Four hours later I got a phone call from him. "Mom, can you bring some eye drops when you pick me up? My eye is killing me! My Spanish teacher dismissed class fifteen minutes early because she said she just couldn't look at me any more. I tried to see the school nurse, but she wasn't in her office."

"But you said you were fine! You were laughing!"

"I'm a GUY mom! I'm not going to sit around whining about something hurting. I thought it would stop after a few minutes, but my eye is watering and my nose keeps running and everything is blurry."

Urgent Care Center, here we come.

I picked him up and we headed straight to the UCC. Amazingly, they took us back almost immediately. Ben had a great time talking about what he would do if he lost his eye and had to get a glass eye. "If someone ran into me from behind I could pop it out and act like they hit me hard enough to knock my eye out. At Halloween I could take it out and chase everybody with it!"

That's Ben, always looking at the bright side.

It actually didn't look too bad. His eye wasn't very red although it was watering a good bit. When they tested his vision though, he could see perfectly with his right eye (he read the bottom line of the eye chart) but with his left eye he could only read the third line and even then he missed some of the letters. His vision tested at 20/60.

The doctor came in and examined him thoroughly. I was fully expecting him to tell me that Ben had a light scratch in the corner of his eye. Instead, he drew a picture of an eye and drew two lines across the iris and pupil. "He has two lacerations across the cornea; a long one and a short one." Fortunately they should heal fairly quickly although it may take a few weeks for his vision to return to normal. For now, he has to stay in the dark and not move his eyes around a lot. And I have to squirt ointment in his eye every so often.

The doctor then put something in Ben's eye, turned off the lights, and pulled out a black light. The liquid he had put in Ben's eye glowed brightly. The doctor called in a nurse so that she could see the lacerations in Ben's eye under the black light.

"Oh cool," she said. "It's making the inside of his nose glow too!"

Comments

  1. Who knew jewelry could be so harmful! Glad he's doing better. Did they give you some of that cool glow in the dark stuff to take home? That would be a good trick to play on the unsuspecting neighbors. :) ~ Mary

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Luau, Luau

This week we attended our first luau! We went to the luau at the Hale Koa hotel. The grounds were just incredible. There were men playing soft Hawaiian music, the plants and flowers were glorious. There were people in native costumes making headbands out of palm fronds, chopping up fresh coconut for us to taste, handing out flowers for us to put behind our ears and handing out seashell leis to each guest. It was very relaxed and peaceful. This was a Samoan man who kept us entertained during the cocktail hour. He was very funny! Check out those tattoos. He said the tattoos were part of a rite of passage that he had to go through. He said it took fourteen days to complete the tattoo and, yes, it hurt. And yes, everything was tattooed. He demonstrated how to climb a coconut tree using only a bandanna around his feet. They picked people out of the audience and gave them a quick hula lesson. Katie was thrilled to be one of the people chosen and of course it irritated Ben because he thi...