Scratched Cornea

April 8th, 2010
~5:30pm
Avery comes to me from watching Planet Earth saying he poked himself in the eye.
How?
I was pulling my hands out of my lap and poked my eye.
Um, okay.
It was way too watery and squeezed shut to inspect it yet so I sent him back to the couch and told him to keep his eyes shut for a little bit.

6pm
Having followed my advice to keep both eyes shut, I find Avery asleep. I wake him to check his eye and see a large scratch across the bottom third of his pupil and much of the iris below.
I tape a gauze eye patch on.
Time to call the doctor.

6:30pm
After much calling back and forth I'm informed I need to take him to the ER.
Yea. My favorite place.
Meanwhile I had been trying to get food out for the boys while distracted on the phone because Travis was in Portland for a dental convention and I had no idea when he'd be back, nor could I get a hold of him.
I call the in-laws to ask if I can drop off Carson and Emmett.
I finally get a hold of Travis so he knows where the boys are.
Dinner does NOT happen. I grab a Nutri-grain bar for Avery.

7pm
About to leave the in-laws when Travis shows up - nice timing, no car seat issues now.

7:20pm
Arrive at the ER. Apparent wait time 49 minutes on "fast track" whatever that is. During registration the eye patch was taken off so the nurse could look and she could see the scratch although I was surprised to see it was not as bad as it had been.

9:07pm
We're shown into a room.

Avery was miserable. His eye would feel better then, even when he was distracted with something, he'd suddenly spasm in pain and his eye would water again. Plus, we were hungry!


At least we had a TV and Avery was stoked to see Life was on Discovery.


We also passed time with one of Avery's favorites: making faces. He loved seeing the results on camera.


10:05pm
A nurse finally shows up.
The doctor eventually gets around to putting in some stinging then numbing drops so he can put a dye in to better check for irregularities.


He didn't see any.
After he left the room I looked again myself just with the room lights reflecting off the eyeball and I could still see it.
While I wait for him to come back Avery gets to try on the glasses


All dyed up


When the doctor gets back I inform him I can still see a scratch. It looks like a layer has been taken off. I can see the light reflecting in Avery's eye wobble across it as well as the light reflecting on the rim around the missing layer.
The doc looks the same way I was and still can't see it.
So now I'm mad. I'm tired, hungry, and now the doctor probably thinks I'm an anxious type of mom who's seeing things when I'm definitely a "walk-it-off" type of mom. I'm not delusional dude. The nurse at registration saw it too.
So he claims he believes me and orders erythromycin ointment for Avery which apparently is what they do for a scratch... which he wouldn't have bothered with if I hadn't said I still see it.
Time to wait for the pharmacy to bring the medicine.
We're also given referral info for an ophthalmologist to call in the morning.

This is what time it was when we were told we could go home.


We were still starving, and I had promised Avery we could possibly stop somewhere to eat afterward if he was good. Of course at that time it's either drive thru or someplace like Shari's, but I'm not waiting for food. Drive thru it is. Two chicken sandwiches from Jack in the Box and we head home.

When we got home Travis informed us that Avery had an 8am appointment with the ophthalmologist. I guess the ER doc went ahead and took care of that for us. So much for a good night's sleep.

Avery woke up this morning with his eye feeling much better. The appointment went as well as can be expected with the other boys in tow. The doctor said he could see the scratch and that it had already healed some and would likely finish healing in a day or two. No worries. No pirate Avery. All that for so little. I suppose that's the way it goes sometimes, but I wouldn't change a thing if I saw another scratch like I did originally.