Rock usually wins

In a game of paper-rock-scissors any of the three can win. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock most people can’t keep track of the rules so the winner is seldom decided. When you play rock vs. eye rock always wins.

On Friday I wanted to take care of as many chores around the house as I could before Jessica got home from work. I started by mowing the yard and it was rather uneventful. I had some grass to trim around the edges of the house so I grabbed the weed eater and fired it up. I made sure to wear my protective glasses because nobody wants to go blind – the chicks really don’t dig it. I was almost done when the really really crappy happened. I hit a rock.

But wait you might say – you were wearing protective glasses and they should have prevented injuries. You are correct – I was but irony loves to kick me in the ass. Unfortunately rocks like to bounce and this one bounced off my cheek (directly beneath my eye socket), ricocheted off the glasses, and bounced off my eye. Yes – it was painful. Somehow all of that military training kicked in and I immediately shut of the weed trimmer and went inside to irrigate my eye to remove any remaining debris. I knew that I didn’t want to rub my eye or really keep it open. I grabbed my recall roster and called someone to give me a ride to the ER as I felt sheepish about calling an ambulance. Joe, Jessica’s dad, works in the same firehouse that would probably have responded and I didn’t need any excess attention – especially if it turned out that I was overreacting.

I called Jessica and she wasn’t as calm as I was. I was scared that I would be blind – she was just scared. She quickly jetted out of work and headed down to the ER. She had a visitors pass but didn’t have tags on her car so she had to grab mine to get onto Ft. Lewis. I got to Madigan (the army hospital) about 20 minutes after it happened and I was triaged and quickly rushed through. Most of the people that are in the ER have colds and don’t want to make an appointment – when you have a life/limb/eyesight injury you get pushed right to the front of the line. I was the last one in the waiting room and one of the first ones out. Jessica got to the waiting room without stalling my car – imagine driving a picky clutch while you are extremely nervous while having little experience and driving in rush hour traffic on a Friday. All circumstances considered she did quite well.

The doc in the ER numbed my eye (hooray for medicine) and went a little overboard with the eyedrops. For the next 30 minutes part of my face was numb. He wasn’t an ophthalmologist so he could only do a basic check to see that I had torn a chunk off my cornea and that it was hanging loose. Gross huh? He called for an ophthalmologist to come in and do a further consult.

The other doc came and told me that the tear wasn’t in my central vision and I had a giant sigh of relief. I wasn’t going to be blind (HOORAY!). He removed the torn chunk with a Q-Tip and gave prescribed me some painkillers and some ointment. Yes, he touched my eye – some people in my family are probably squirming just thinking about someone else touching their eye. It’s not that big of a deal.

We had a snafu getting the medication and it ended up taking an extra two hours after diagnosis and consult to get out of there but at least I knew that I was going to be ok. My eye is doing quite well and it should be mostly healed in another day or two.

I’m a lucky guy – unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to have the rock bounce off the glasses in the first place.