So I was at Taekwondo working weapons Wednesday night. Lately I’ve been working with the Ssahng Jeol Bong, more commonly known as the Nunchuku–and I just lost control of it. I hit myself in the right eye with the end of it. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to blink, so it caught my eyeball dead on.
It stung real bad right away and I saw streaking white light–like when they make the jump to light speed in Star Wars:
It’s like Han and Chewie had a front row seat in my eye!!
When that went away and I opened my eye, my vision was real blurry. That wouldn’t go away. Mrs. Neal came right over and asked me what happened. I told her and she helped me over to the benches so I could sit down. She gave me some Renuz eye drops to put in my eye to try to make it feel better. When those burned like fire instead of helping, I knew I needed to go to the E.R. I couldn’t see out of that eye one bit, so Mrs. Neal was kind enough to drive me home. We got someone to come over and watch the kids and Tonya took me to the E.R. Fortunately, it was a ghost town when we got there and they took me right back.
The doctor came in right away and squirted a local anesthetic drop in the eye, then some dye so he could look at it under a fluorescent light. He saw that I had abrasions on the Cornea. So, he applied some anti-biotic cream DIRECTLY ONTO MY FRIGGING EYEBALL and then put a patch over it. He told me I would need to follow up with my family doctor the next day.
Here’s what I looked like when I got home:
So first thing Thursday morning I called my doctor and his nurse said to just come in right away and they would work me in. Tonya took off work, swung by the house and picked me up and off we were to our second doctor’s visit in 12 hours. When we got there, they took me right into an exam room and my doc–who is AWESOME by the way—came right in. He examined my eye and agreed I had a Corneal Abrasion, but wanted me to be seen by an Ophthalmologist to be sure that I didn’t have any Retinal damage. He sent an emergency referral to an Ophthalmologist right across the street from his office–convenient!!
Tonya and I went and had lunch while we waited for the referral to go through. We went to a Shakey’s Pizza in the area for their lunch buffet. I wanted to leave almost as soon as we got there though. I’ve been there many times before and they are usually busy–this day was no different. However, whatever happened to being polite and not staring?? I felt like the frigging Elephant Man!! It was ridiculous. I mean, it’s only an eye patch people!! Seriously!! I don’t know why people don’t raise their children to be polite and not stare, but I know my kids wouldn’t have!! And this isn’t a new problem, since the people who were gawking at me like I had 2 heads were all adults. OY!!
So the referral went through and we were off to the Ophthalmologist–for our third doctor’s office visit in just over 12 hours.. Once we got in, it took awhile for the paper work to get processed. I then had a routine eye exam on the injured eye, followed by more waiting. It was pretty unpleasant. I was in pain and waiting in a bright waiting room wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t upset. They were working me into their already full calendar on an emergency referral after all.
The doctor finally came out and called me back. She was really nice and even though they were working me in and the waiting room was packed, I never felt like she was trying to rush me through. She did a pretty thorough exam with the Eye Scope thingy–from what I could tell anyway–and took time to explain what she was looking for, what she was doing and what to expect. At one point during the exam, she told me that she was going to have to use a pretty intense light and that it would likely cause pain in my eye. She apologized a lot but said it was necessary. She told me to feel free to pull away if I felt I needed to, to blink or look away as much as I felt I needed to but that we’d have to get through it.
When she said “Intense light that would likely cause pain in my eye”, she wasn’t lying one bit. WOW!! It took a little bit to get through that one. She said that that with the thousands of nerve endings in the eye–all of which were on high alert in my eye–it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience at all. She wasn’t kidding. It actually made me nauseous and dizzy. She said my Retina was intact–always a good thing to hear!! However I did have a condition called “Iritis”, which is basically a bruising and swelling of the inside of the eye. It causes severe pain, since the swelling is on the inside of the eye, it has nowhere to go.
After that, she put dye in my eye and switched the Eye Scope to the blue fluorescent light and confirmed I had a large abrasion/scratch/chasm/laceration/a-river-runs-through-it going down my Cornea. Her exact words were “A rather large Corneal abrasion.” She said the good news was that the antibiotic ointment and the patch did their job–keeping the eye closed and medicated meant that the abrasion was already starting to gloss over and heal!! She told me I didn’t need to wear the patch anymore — which was just fine by me. I was already getting really tired of that thing. Plus, Tonya was getting tired of hearing me say things like “Shiver me timbers” and “There must be an ‘X’ on your pants cuz I’m diggin’ yer booty”. You can see where that could get annoying after awhile.
She prescribed some steroid eye drops to take every 3-4 hours for the Iritis. I have to go back next week to make sure the Corneal Abrasion is healed up and to check and see how the Iritis is coming along.
All in all Tonya and I spent a good 8 of the last 20 hours inside a doctor’s office of one kind or another. And for more info, here’s the Wikipedia link for Iritis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iritis
I went back to work today and felt like it would never end!! Wow it was bright out there!! My pupil was dilated all day long and the light was killing me. I have never had a pupil dilated before and frankly don’t care to ever have it done again. BRIGHT LIGHT IN MY EYES GO AWAY PLEASE!!!!!! My eye was twitching and freaking out all day long. At one point it actually said to me, “Remember that patch thing you had on me? Ya, that was nice and dark. You should put that back on. Don’t get me wrong, the sunglasses are a nice touch and I appreciate the effort but they aren’t exactly cutting it. Do you have anything in a welder’s mask?”
On a positive note, my pupil is finally getting back to normal size now. Yes, it’s been an interesting couple of days. Until next time, seek your bliss and plant new seeds.
Ride lots…
