Wanna Hear About My Day?

Well, it started at 1:00 AM when I awoke to a stabbing pain in my left eye. Tears poured from it and I couldn't open it. I forced it open and flooded it with saline over the bathroom sink. That helped a very slight bit but I still couldn't sleep. I dozed off and woke repeatedly all night. Finally, around 6:30 I took a shower in the dark with both eyes closed because I couldn't stand the light.

I eased into opening my eye with the hall light on while waking the kids in their mostly darkened room. We went through the morning routine. I set the trash outside so I could take it to the dumpster on the way to the car and that is when I saw that there were 5 inches of snow on the ground. Magically, we were 20 minutes behind schedule.

I hurried the kids through the rest of their breakfast and stomped downstairs to dump the trash and shovel out the car. I also looked for Samuel's snow boots in the back of the car because I had found only Solomon and Miriam's when unpacking their Albuquerque things. Samuel's boots were not in the car which means they are in Albuquerque. When we all got outside, I carried Samuel to the car. This gets harder every week and it's nearly impossible when we are both wearing massive coats and the ground is slippery.

There was a traffic jam in the school parking lot. Someone bumped into someone else and with only one moving lane, the rest of us were stuck. I put on David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed in Flames, CD 4 and made the best of it. Driving to work under normal circumstances takes 7 minutes, tops. Today it was a long, slow, skidding 25 minute drive, during which I tried to keep my windshield from re-freezing.

At work, I unveiled my freakish eye and everyone recoiled in horror. It was decided that the doctor I work with would give me some pontocaine and fluorescein, look at my eye under a black light and see if anything was still stuck in my eye or if this was just the effect of whatever was in my eye last night.

Only we were out of pontocaine because it expired 2 months ago. My nurse manager called the hospital pharmacies to see if we could order some and neither of them had any. Finally, the doctor called another pediatrician's office and told them about me. They agreed to administer some pontocaine if I walked over. So I did. Across the parking lot in 6 inches of snow, with my injured eye cupped behind my glove.

It was worth it, though. Within 3 seconds of that glorious drop contacing my eyeball, I was transported back to my former self. No more pain, no more squinting and avoiding light. I didn't even care that my eye was bright orange and yellow tears were now falling from my eye. I practically skipped back to our office.

In our treatment room, the doctor confirmed that there is, indeed a scratch just below my pupil. So he applied some antibiotic ointment and an eye patch. Yes, I look like a pirate. A pirate with glasses that are only affecting one eye.

After an hour or so, the pontocaine wore off and my eye began throbbing again. I answered a few phone calls, did my Monday control tests and wussed out. Everyone agreed that it would be fine for me to go home. After all, would you want someone with an eye patch and altered depth perception giving your child shots? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Only I couldn't go home yet. Samuel was still without snow boots. I removed my eye patch and proceeded to the store while alternately squinting and attempting to look normal. The sun reflecting off the snow was bad enough without already having eye pain so I stuck my sunglasses on over my real glasses. Perfect. I bought new snow boots as quickly as I could and came home.

I have since been reclining on the couch with a new eye patch and the remaining David Sedaris CDs. It's almost time to go pick up the kids but I've just gotten used to this patch again and hate to take it off. I think I'll walk to the school and loot it for treasure.