northWESsed 2.0

What’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick? Pretty much anything.

Two days ago, my 7yo son poked me in the eye by accident as he was stretching out his arm to put his coat on. Actually “poked me in the eye” doesn’t quite do it justice. More like he gouged a small furrow in my cornea with his fingernail. This was very painful.

But the fun didn’t stop there. I was in such pain and having such marked vision problems that I went to the emergency room that night. I showed up around 7:45pm and wasn’t seen by a physician until close to midnight. (They kept saying it was a busy night.) While waiting in the front room, I had to endure both America’s Funniest Home Videos and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. (And no, I wasn’t crying because it was so wonderful how that nice family got that new house — my eye was injured!)

After finally getting seen by a physician, I was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion. In fact, the doctor on-call noted how you could really see the groove of my son’s nail in my eye with the fluoroscope. He even brought another doctor in to see it for herself. I was then sent home with my eye covered with a patch, after being reassured that these things generally healed pretty quickly and that I should be okay by morning as long as I left the patch on until then. Another note: when you get an eye patch from the hospital, it is not the cool, black eye patch that pirates wear — it is a major assembly of bandage and gauze that makes you look like a crazy person.

What followed was a sleepless night of agony as the pain in my eye kept flaring up as if the injury had just happened. In the morning, I called my physician’s clinic and wrangled a morning appointment with a nurse-practitioner. When I went in to see the nurse-practitioner, it was pretty much the same story — eye got patched up and I was told these things heal quickly. At least this time I was prescribed some Vicodin for the pain and also some antibiotic ointment for my eye. I was in such pain that I ended up crashing at the clinic for the whole morning until I was sent home in a cab. (I was too loopy on Vicodin at that point to be trusted to get home on my own.)

Monday night was another exercise in agony, muted somewhat by the dose of Vicodin I took before bed. (Let me just say that you can really feel when Vicodin kicks in — not a bad feeling if you don’t have to operate any heavy machinery.)

Tuesday morning — still hurt like hell. I called the eye clinic and insisted on an appointment that day with an actual ophthalmologist. After sleeping the rest of the morning, I was able to go to the eye clinic for a 2pm appointment.

What a difference a specialist makes — they concluded that because of the degree of my corneal injury, patching was useless because any healing growth of epithelial cells across the gouge in my eye would be ripped away as soon as I blinked hard or moved my eyeball. This would explain why I would periodically experience blinding, stabbing pain in my eye as if I had injured it all over again. Instead, I was given a bandage contact lens which I would wear for as much as a couple weeks while my cornea got a chance to heal properly. I also now have three types of eyedrops, two of which need to be administered four times a day.

So, some lessons:

1. If it hurts like hell, make a fuss about it. Pain, especially excruciating pain, is a good indicator that something’s wrong.
2. Vicodin is really powerful stuff. Man, you can feel your body turn into goo when that Vicodin wave hits.
3. Emergency rooms are one of the circles of hell. I hope that when I die, it’s not anywhere near an emergency room. I’ve spent too much time in them to ever want my friends and loved ones to have to see me in one.
4. There’s a reason they call them “specialists.” Drs. Moscato and Shen are my new heroes for saving me from agonizing pain.

All this being said, it’s true that my contact lens-covered eye still stings a bit. Better than the shooting pains of before, but still annoying. Also, the view from my left eye looks as though I were trying to view things through a sheet of vaseline-smeared plastic. Oh well — in a couple of weeks, it should all be better. These things heal quickly…