Tuesday, October 17, 2006

At Least it Wasn't Anthrax, Right?!?

I am a total dork. (Not that this comes as a stunning surprise to most of you, but there you go.)

My sweet husband made me a Jack O' Lantern pin to wear to school. I was attempting to super glue a pin back to the reverse of the clay pumpkin on Monday evening. The superglue was all dried and crusty at the top of the tube. When I went to scrape away the dried gunk, a hunk of dry super glue went into my right eye.

As I've mentioned before, my family is hell on our eyes, so luckily, JF dashed for the eye wash. I still felt like there was grit in the eye, despite the repeated washings, so off I went to the ER to be checked out. I arrived there at 9:15 pm on Monday evening. I got sent back into the ER at 12:15, to wait on a gurney in the freezing hallway. The nurse who "triaged" me said that she would have to have the doctor check me out.

The doctor came and prodded around in my eye, and said that he wanted to look at it under a special light. I was moved into a small treatment room. I mentioned to the nurse that I felt like a total idiot. I mean, I know that superglue in the eye is probably not the weirdest thing she's ever seen, right? She tells me that she was helping vaccinate the troops for deployment to the Middle East a few years ago, when she inadvertently got *anthrax* in her own eye.

The long and short of it all (too late!) is that, thankfully, there was no lasting damage. I got out of the ER at 2:45 am, and am now in possession of a miniscule bottle of eyedrops that would have cost me $102 had I not had the good fortune to have a prescription drug card.

I have an appointment with a specialist tomorrow to make sure that there's no lasting damage and no sign of infection. Now, if they only have a prescription for complete dorkiness, I'll be all set.

5 comments:

ccw said...

I'm sorry but I am laughing my ass off over this. Did the Jehovah's Witness secret weapon show up at your door while you were trying to rinse your eye?

I'm glad your eye is ok.

Anonymous said...

Oh gee. Frightening to say the least! Glad nothing seriously bad occurred. Here's hoping the follow-up goes as smoothly!

Marni said...

Oh,Klee... that sounds just like something I would do. Glad there wasn't any damage.

And don't you HATE going to the emergency room? Why - oh why - does it take so darn long?!

KLee said...

CCW -- no, there were no Jehovah's to be found. Unless, that is, you coult the woman who sat next to me for about three hours moaning, "Jesus, please help me..." over and over.

Miche -- the follow up went well this afternoon. The eye specialist said that there was no lasting damamge, and I can even cut back on the meds a little. So, it's doing better than I supposed it would be for having industrial solvent in it.

Marni -- Boy, do I loathe the emergency room. I can't tell you how many people were there with "stomachaches", just so they wouldn't have to go to work the next day. No wonder the ER is always so slammed! There were WAY too many people who weren't "sick enough" to really be in the ER.

Karyn said...

Girl, you should know by now that we (and by we, I really do mean you and I) are not encouraged to use stuff like SUPERGLUE. Jeeze. I'm glad you're okay. (Recently I snuck a contraband hot glue gun back into the house. So far, so good. But the memory of one's wife having hot glued herself to the cat and the telephone, simultaneously is apparently vivid, and I do get a lot of dark looks and threats about chaperoned trips to the craft store...)