LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP (or Do As I Say, Not As I Did)

  

 

   Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

 

Friends, I did something incredibly stupid last night -- stupid and dangerous and embarrassing. 

I am so embarrassed that I am loath to tell you what I did, but am going to set aside my embarrassment and share my story in the hope that it will prevent you from doing this or something similar. (I do not assume, dear readers, that you are as foolish as I, but we all have our moments, do we not?)

Herewith my cautionary tale.  

Because I have dry eyes, I keep eye drops on my bedside table. Last night my eyes felt particularly scratchy, so I decided to skip the eye drops and go straight for eye gel. Do you all know about eye gel?  It comes in a very small tube and does a great job of moisturizing eyes overnight.

(You’ve figured out the punchline already, haven’t you?  I will, nonetheless, finish my recital.)

I grabbed the little tube and headed for bed. After lying down, I squeezed a bit of the gel into my left eye.  

Yikes!  It stung! 

I sprang out of bed, ran into the bathroom, and began splashing cold water in my eye.  I did this for a very long time before looking to see what I had put in my eye. 

It was Compound W – a wart-removing gel!  (I didn’t even remember having wart-removing gel in my home.)

In my defense, the tubes look very much alike – both blue and white and similar in size.

 

 

Of course, I should have looked closely at the tube before bringing it anywhere near my eye, as I am sure you would have done, but just in case, I want to warn you to ALWAYS READ THE LABEL before applying any foreign matter to your person.

Back to my story –

I continued to flush out my eye, first with cold water, then with eye drops. After determining that I had not blinded myself, I went back to bed, applied actual eye gel, and managed to fall asleep.

I awoke this morning with a very red and irritated eye. What to do? Should I go to the ER?  No, I would wait hours to be seen. Should I go to urgent care? No, they would just tell me to go to my eye doctor. So, I called my optometrist’s office, and they were able to work me in.

The optometrist did a thorough exam, told me the eye looked much better than she expected--although my cornea was somewhat abraded, and congratulated me on doing such a good job of flushing out the goo.  She also told me that neither the ER nor urgent care would have had the machine she employed to look at my eye.  

The good doctor was kindness itself and assuaged my embarrassment by telling me she had seen worse in the form of a woman who accidentally squeezed nail glue into her eye, necessitating surgery to open her eye lid. 

I, by contrast, have only to apply antibiotic drops for a week to prevent infection. I think it is safe to say I got off easy.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am off to rest my eye. . . . 

p.s. - Yes, I did throw away the wart gel.