I started my morning with a fantastic accident. I somehow managed to get something chemical based in my eye. Naturally, this burned and, equally naturally, I took measures to get that out of my eye as soon as possible.
Of course, when your eye is burning there is no such thing as fast enough.
I’d been washing my face at the time so I’m sure that’s what got in my eye, but also it meant that I had hot water running from the faucet. After managing to get my contact out, I started flushing my eye with ‘fresh water’ as we’re told to do. They do not say to flush your eye with ‘fresh hot water’ but I was under duress and it was what was readily available.
The water was simply too hot for comfort.
So I grabbed a bottle of eye drops and tried to irrigate. This was just about as painful as all the burning and flushing. Next thing I know my right eye is crying and this crying caused my nose to feel some remarkable sympathy and also begin running.
I’m in the bathroom, crying out of one side of face and I think to myself “I should wash off that contact and try again.”
Bad plan, I know.
Upon the failure of that plan I thought to myself “You should probably find a soft contact and bandage that or you’ll be in serious pain all day.” All I have in the way of soft contacts are prescription because, let’s face it, very few people have zero prescription contacts lying about. I tried that on for size, but decided it would be best to wear my glasses. Glasses and contacts do not work together.
Just FYI.
I caught a look at myself in the mirror at this point and was not surprised to see that my right eye had swollen to the size of a walnut. It was at this point that I considered calling JJ and having him drive me to work, but thought better of it when I looked at the time.
So I walked downstairs and ran into the nice lawyer who lives downstairs.
“Oh,” he said, clearly trying to be nice. “Allergies?”
“No,” I replied, sniffling and peering at him through my one good eye. “I’ve just given myself SPK in my right eye and then exacerbated the situation by trying to irrigate it before it was ready.”
“Oh,” he said again. “Well, I am sorry.”
“Not your fault,” I said, dabbing at the corner of my still weeping eye. “Just a rough start to the morning.”
“You could say that again.”