Coopersville

Wow, have the last 24 hours been uncomfortable for me.

It's all started on Halloween night. Me and some friends went on a pre-planned hike across the town outskirts and through the woods, because cults have a tendancy to hang out there on Halloween and we didn't want to miss that. Fifteen minutes in, we walk up a somewhat large and steep hill at the end of the first part of the woods. We all notice we have burrs stuck to us, and so we pick them off before going on. I guess I still had some of a burr on my hand after picking them off, because I rubbed my eye after doing so and got what I suppose was a thorn under my eyelid. It bothered me, but didn't feel unusually painful compared to anything else getting in my eye. We all continued on as I tried watering, then rubbing the thorn out of my eye for what I suppose was ten minutes. After that, the irritation stoped and I went about the hike like normal.

We all finished up the hike around the outskirts (didn't see any cultists) and walked to our homes. I walk in my house, snatch some leftover candy and proceed to this computer to check on these forums, amongst the other sites and nightly routines I go through. By 11:00PM, I'm about to get off and go to bed when I feel that same irriration in my right eye, except a little more intense this time. I stay on the PC a little longer and tell whoever I'm talking to, "Ah crap, I have something in my eye again!" I try rubbing and tearing whatever it is out, but no luck. I just go, "Meh, I'll sleep it off; whatever it is, it'll be gone in the morning," and I turn off the computer and retire to my room. I immediately try to go to sleep, and for the first minute, everything seemed fine, but the irritation only got worse when I closed my eyes. I tried falling asleep for two hours but my eye just kept stinging more and more. Eventually, I get up and head to the bathroom where I take a close look at my eye in the mirror. I couldn't see anything. I folded my eyelid open to look at that and still didn't see anything but one damn bloodshot eye. I scraped the inside of my eyelid a bit with my fingernail and whiped the goo off from around my eye with a tissue, then just went back to bed.

Back in my room, I continued to toss and turn, as my eye just wouldn't stop stinging. After another hour I just gave up and decided to stay awake the rest of the night. 3AM-7AM was just basically a cycle of watching TV with discomfort and blurred vision, rubbing my eye, then going to the bathroom to re-check to see if there's anything still in there. I also noticed my eye was unusually sensitive to the light of the television screen.

Finally, my alarm went off and I lerched down stairs and ploped on the loveseat. I let my mom finish whatever she was doing and then I told her, "I think I have to go see the doctor." She asks, "Why?" I reply with, "I have something in my eye and I can't get it out." And my mom goes, "Ah, I'll take you to the emergency room for that." My younger brother then comes down the stairs. We let him go through the morning routine of eating, showering, etc. Before we leave. My mom drops him off at school and then we proceed to the hospital.

I'm fortunate enough to be the first and only person in the ER, so I get to go straight to the desk. The lady there asks me what's wrong, I tell her how I have crap in my eye socket somewhere. She takes my blood pressure, temperature, etc, and I'm registered. I go back to the ER waiting room for about a minute and a nurse comes out and calls my name, and I follow her to one of the rooms. She gives me a brief eye exam with both my good and 'bad' eye, I pass, and she says, "One moment please!" And walks away. This was perhaps the most grueling part of the visit to the hospital, because I ended up sitting there, waiting for at least fourty minutes until another male doctor walks in. He scans through his clipboard and confirms my problem and finally we get down to business.

First he does basically what I was doing in the mirror, folding my eyelid back and checking to see if anything's in there. He says, "I don't see anything." He then leads me to the other end of the room where there's some device which I stick my head in and he looks at my eyeball more closely through some sort of parascope. He puts anesthetic eyedrops in, since just moving my eye stings so much. Again, he goes, "Well, I still don't see anything in or on your eyeball. It is really bloodshot though, so I'm going to look for any scratches now." He then applies these dyed eyedrops that turned my eyes orange. It looked really cool when I saw myself in the mirror; I was going to take a shot of it with my webcam when I home, but most of it had already washed out by then. Anyway, he takes yet another look at my eyeball through the parascope, then tells me what the situation is. "Well, whatever was in your eye is gone now, but it managed to cause a scratch over the edge or your iris, and left a fairly big cut around the outter white of your eyeball. He drew a picture of it, and told me stories of steel workers who had full-blown gouges through their eyes which made me nauseous.

After all that. I went home, watched Triple-X, called over a friend, and we played GTA:SA. I just got back from bowling right now; I managed to do pretty well, considering I was playing with 1 1/2 eyes. The doctor says it should be fully healed in four more days, which sucks, but at least I'll be better in time for Halo2. It still stings when I close my eyes, so I don't know if I'll be sleeping again tonight. The stinging damn well better be gone after that, because I doubt I can go four days without sleep.

Happy birthday mom.