The blind leading the, well...the Blind!

My husband and I both wear glasses. Mine aren't nearly the strength of his, though. He's close to blind as the proverbial bat when he doesn't have his glasses on. Mine I really need for fine detail and night driving. I can do all other things relatively well. (JF swears that that statement is, at best, debatable.)

When the Offspring was much smaller, about age two, JF was working in the yard, and managed to poke himself in the eye with a stick. Now, all of you stop snickering *right now!* That's uncalled-for! He was wearing his glasses at the time, and the stick managed to work itself under the glasses and into the eye. Well, of *course* this was on a weekend, and we had to go to one of those Urgent Care facilities. Being after hours, they could not "verify" our health insurance, so we had to pay for his exam and prescriptions out-of-pocket. This was during really lean times, too. So, he has a corneal abrasion -- he can still see the scratch on his eye today, ew. -- and the eye, go figure, is infected. What, you mean a stick is *dirty*? Who knew?

Fast forward about a year. The Offspring is now slightly older, and is playing in her playroom. (Yes, she's so spoiled, she has an entire *room* in our house for her toys, and they're STILL everywhere...) She has a plastic stick in her hand that she wants to show me. And, wait for it, people! It goes right into my eye. I figure, well...at least it's not a *dirty stick!* The eye really begins to bother me, , and of course, it's on the weekend....so off we traipse, again, to the same Urgent Care place that JF had been to barely a year before. Now, *I* have an infected corneal abrasion. In the same eye that JF's was in. I mention to the doctor that my husband had the same thing happen to him a year previous, and he'd gotten treatment here. The doctor, clearly believing that we are trying to joke with him, pulls our files, and looks at both of us with jaws agape. We're at a loss to explain how, exactly, we've come to be the Blindbeard the Pirate family. The doc wants me to even wear a patch, but I get all loopy from the distorted vision, and I can't end up wearing it. I decided to deal with the eye pain -- that I could handle. The nausea the patch induced....no, thank you!

Fast forward to 2004. JF is out, once again, doing his yardly duties, and stops me on the way to the store -- will I pick him up a few things? Sure, and off I go to the store. When I return from the store, JF scuffs his toe in the dirt and says, "Um...honey? I....um...broke my glasses." Now, these were supposed to be the glasses to last a millenia -- they were the ultra-flexy spring kind, and made with composite plastic so they were light. I'm wondering how on earth he managed to break the darn things. He tells me that his face began to sweat while mowing the lawn, so he took them off. When he went to go put them back on, he realized that he'd laid them *on the trunk of my car.* When I had backed out to go shopping, I had slung them into the street, and they'd been crushed by traffic. He tortures himself, because now we have to go get him another pair of glasses, and they aren't cheap.

Fast forward to this Sunday. JF slogs away in the jungle we call a yard. (Now, that's not all together fair. It's now a denuded jungle, since it looks like he went a little Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the shrubbery. I'm not complaining, though. I was worried that I was going to be spirited away by howler monkeys for a while, there.) JF is mowing the grass. When he comes in, he tells me that he *has something in his eye.* This time, it's the other eye. He washes it out, and while it helps a tad, he's still very uncomfortable. So, now we make a trip to get groceries, and while we're there, we pick up some eyewash and some drops. JF washes out they eye, and we see all kinds of eye crud floating in the saline. We figure that's gotta be good -- that crud used to be IN his eye, and now it's not. Night falls. I put Pookiesnips (the Offspring) to bed, and JF falls asleep. I blog, and suddenly, I hear JF stir and stumble to the bathroom. Apparently, the short time he was asleep, the eye crusted over. This is *not* a good thing. So, we decide he won't go to the overpriced Urgent Care place (mainly because it was closed) but brave the wait, and go to the ER.

JF leaves at 12:30. I wait up, and finally fall asleep somewhere close to 2 am. At about 2:30, he makes it home. This one they think is also abraded, but didn't have the exact equipment to tell. It *is* infected, so he gets some eyedrops to put in it, and some pain medication. They tell him to call the Eye Specialist in the morning, and tell them that he's an ER referral. He goes to the Eye Gurus on his lunch break, and yes -- it's another corneal abrasion. He gets another round of eyedrops, and they want to see him again at the end of the week.

Apparently, our family is hell on our eyes. What have we learned from all this? Do yard work in Haz-Mat suits? Wear safety goggles everywhere? Buy stock in a monocle manufatcurer? I don't know. All I *do* know is that I'm clumsy, and I trip over stuff enough already. If I go blind, I'm in a terrible state.

Wish us luck -- I think we'll need it.