Rick's World

Two days ago, I happened to go by the car wash place to get my car washed. It's been needing a wash for months, and I finally got around to doing it. In the process of washing the car, I found out that a lot of the little spots of stuff that were all over the car were likely drops of tree sap. After finding this out, I suddenly figured out where those spots were coming from. There is a large palm tree in my next door neighbor's front yard that has several branches that hang over my driveway. Obviously, these branches have been dripping sap onto my car, making all those spots on it. It was time to trim those branches.

Yesterday, I decided to take care of this little problem, so I parked the car away from the driveway, got out my ladder and my pole saw and set to work. I'm there a couple feet up on the ladder sawing away at one of the branches trying to cut it down. After a few minutes of work, I manage to cut through the branch. The branch falls, and proceeds to fall right into my face. The trunk of the branch proceeds to fall and hit me square in my right eye. Like a dumbass, I wasn't wearing any eye protection. Ouch! That hurt like hell! I go inside, take out my contacts and survey the damage. Other than a cut on my lower eyelid, and my eyes being rather bloodshot, things looked OK. Of course my eye itched like hell. I just figured the itching was because I had some dirt or something from the tree in my eye. Being the typical macho male that I am, I didn't think this little injury was any big deal. No need to go to the doctor for this.

After several hours of this discomfort, I changed my mind and decided to get it checked out after all. So I hopped in my car and drove to the nearest 'Urgent Care' medical clinic. Closed on Sundays! Then I drove to the next urgent car clinic only to discover that one is closed on Sundays also. Well this is stupid! A medical clinic isn't much use if it's closed! Besides, I was trying to avoid doing too much driving with my injured eye. I could see fine out of the eye, but it was bothering me, so I didn't want to take the risk. Unfortunately, I didn't have much choice but to do some more driving. I knew of one urgent care clinic that would be open, but it was a good 15-20 miles away. Oh well, I guess I have no choice.

I drive down to this third urgent care clinic, and it's open (It's open 24 hours a day). I check myself in and sit down to wait. After an hour or so, they call me in and take me to the examination room. i then sat there for what seemed like another half hour. Thankfully, they had a little flat screen TV there that I could watch, so I watched TV while I waited. After about a half hour the doctor comes in and examines my eye up close and determines that I have a corneal abrasion (a scratch on the eye itself) as well as the scratch on the eyelid. She said that the eye would normally heal very fast, often within 24 hours, but you had to make sure that it doesn't get infected. So she prescribed some antibiotics in eyedrop form. They also gave me a tetanus shot to make sure i didn't get any problems from the exposure to the tree branch in my eye. Finally, after a lot more waiting, they let me go. They even gave me a note excusing me from work for the next two days, but telling me to make sure that I went to see my regular eye doctor this morning to have it checked out. Because of the fast healing of the eye, you have to check the eye within 24 hours. I went from the doctor's office to the only 24 hour pharmacy I could find and put in for the prescription. I then went home for the night.

This morning, I called in sick to work and made an appointment with my main eye doctor. I went to the doctor and they checked me out. Of course I forgot to bring the eye drops with me and I couldn't remember the name of the drug, so she had to call the pharmacy to get the type of drug it was. They checked it out and essentially diagnosed the same thing - superficial corneal abrasion... In other words, a minor cut on my eye. They told me to continue using the eye drops for the next week or so and to come back tomorrow morning for a quick check to see how the eye is healing.

I'm still using the drops and will continue to use them (every hour!) for the next week. I also can't wear my contacts for the next week (the only real downside). While technically I could take tomorrow off from work on doctor's advice as well, I'm going to go to work. The eye is feeling a lot better today. It still itches a little every once in a while, but is hardly noticeable. Tomorrow, I plan on going to the doctor, and then going to work from there. I'll likely be a little late to work, but I'll be there.

I got lucky and only ended up with a scratch. It could have been much worse. Always wear that eye protection when doing yard work!