Sunday went a little like this:

9:30a - Groggily climb out of bed.

9:40a - Sit down on the sofa behind Ryan, who is “typing letters” on Daddy’s laptop with abandon. Look at screen, notice an upside down “V.” Get curious. Tell Ryan to stop hitting “delete” so Mommy can see.

9:41a - As Ryan yells, “No, Ry-yan type LETTERS!” I lean forward to grab his right hand to get him to stop. His left hand goes up towards the sky, as if to ward off the Mommy Monster.

9:42a - Ryan scrapes a chunk off my cornea.

9:42.01a - Mommy howls and rolls off the sofa onto the floor. Howling continues.

I called my mother, who said it would be fine and, despite the fact I couldn’t open my left eye without continued howling, I should take a nap. I’d feel all better after that, apparently.

At 1p, when I woke up howling because I tried to open my left eye again, I told Stephen it was time to go to the hospital. And I. hate. hospitals.

Blah blah, emergency room. Blah blah, wait wait wait. Blah blah, doctor puts all sorts of drops into my eye, one of which turned my injury green. (Dr to Stephen: “Come look at this.” Stephen: “Coooooool.” Michelle: “#@$$%@@#%!”)

Back home, blind as a bat. The “corneal abrasion” is a chunk off my cornea through my pupil and upward into my iris. The ER doc was blase and said it would be healed by Monday night. He gave me antibiotics and pain drops. I thought he was nuts. If I even moved my eyeball, it was like having gritty sand in my eye that I couldn’t rub out. If you’ve ever had an eyelash full of mascara hit your eye, and run to the nearest mirror, you’re getting close. Try having all of your mascara’ed eyelashes fall into it once.

Sunday and Monday pass with me praying for sleep, as there’re not a lot of things you can do in a dark room when you can not only not see, but it hurts like hell to open your good eye as well. I learned a lot of things about my eyes during this time. I learned that when you try to keep one eye closed and just use the other one, both eyes will track together. OW! I also learned that not having depth perception leads to walking into walls and nearly missing the bed when you sit down.

On Tuesday, I saw a fabulous eye doctor (yes, sarcasm) who seemed to be about 112 years old. He had worked me in, and had the greatest bedside manner ever. He’d push my head back, pull down my lower eyelid, fling a drop into it, and say, “Here, this will dilate your eye for a few days.” New container of drops, push my head back, fling a drop in my eye, “Here, this will show the scratch.” (Dr to my mom: “Come look at this.” Mom: “Ooooooooh.” Michelle: “#@$$%@@#%!”) Sits down abruptly, writes a script, hands it to me over his shoulder. “Here, this is for pain.” Another. “Here, this is an antibiotic.” Another. “Here, this is Tylenol 3. Now see me in two days.”

As if.

Another irritating thing about this whole situation is that my firm, widely regarded in the industry as having the worst benefit package on the planet, only allows 8 sick days during the year. Tick, tick, tick, I burned off 4 this week without even trying. Going forward, I have 2.5 days left with four months left in the year and three kids - one in school and two in daycare. Yeah, right.

Thursday’s doctor’s appointment - with an associate of Dr. Dumbass - went nearly as well as the first. This time I had to wait in the waiting room nearly two hours. (That is an absolute pet peeve of mine. Why should I have to cool my heels in the waiting room while a stupid doctor overbooks his time in order to make his tee-time in the afternoon while paying for his kids to go to Notre Dame?) I was irritated and crabby by the time I saw the new doctor. Interestingly, both the doctor and nurse were surprised to the point of shock that Dr. Dumbass had given me the “old school” dilation medicine. This doctor said those drops can dilate an eye up to two weeks. If I hadn’t seen Dr. Dumbass shuffle out of the office during my wait, I’d have choked him then and there.

But oh, the eye looks fine, and oh, I can go back to work Monday, and nice to see you.

Wait. Can I get a detail or two? Is there anything I’m supposed to do? Anything I’m not? See, I’m in pain here, and my vision sucks. Can you spend more than 30 seconds so I can make sure this thing heals fully?

Nope, you’re great, he says. I shouldn’t need to see you back. Good luck and godspeed.

In case you’re wondering, I will not be back to see this bunch of idiots.

So today was my first day out of the house (besides to doctors) in five days or so. The big trip was to Target. Woo. By the time I got home, I was nauseated from trying to read everything and wishing I could just collapse. I can’t wait to see how the weekend goes.

Bleah,
mich