So here’s the update and story on {O}’s eye, which turned out to be an injury:   When we got home from our field trip on that Thursday, I took yet another look at her eye, which was never easy, because she was having a very hard time letting it be open at all.  The light really bothered it, and she had been saying it hurt some too.  But I finally caught a quick glimpse of a problem on the surface of her eye.  It was not smooth and glossy as an eyeball should be! Like, something was not right with her eyeball. What I thought was a sty under her eyelid was still there as well, as tiny as it was.  But I was realizing, in light of the days events, that any sty was not the problem.

(After seeing pedi and eye specialist.)

Off to the Doctors to Have Here Eye Checked

It was too late to get her to the doctors, and anyway, she buzzed right from the bathroom to her bedroom to put on her pajamas the second she could….she wanted to go to sleep a.s.a.p.  Just as she had done all the way home (it was a longish ride)—it was exhausting trying to hold her good eye open, and she just wanted to rest her eyes and go to sleep.  So I let her do that, but first thing the next morning, on Friday, she was off to the doctors .

I am always the one to take the kids to the doctors myself (I just prefer to, so I don’t miss a thing where the kids are concerned), but ‘walk-in clinic’ at my pediatrician’s is early in the morning, and I knew Michael could be ready much faster, so he took her.  Anyway, by now I was expecting the diagnosis to be a small scratch in her eye, and come home with some ointment.  I told him to keep that cell phone on.

The Diagnosis

So he took her, and I called him as soon as I thought they ‘might possibly’ be out of the appt.  Michael answered his cell and  said “We just walked out of the door, and we are actually now heading to a specialist!” Me > “WHAT?  You are kidding me!”.  He explained that the pediatrician on call that morning did a routine test to check for an eye abrasion:  They put some dye in the eye, and put a special light on it, and it shows where the scratch is.  What he saw, was a large circle right over the front of her eye, a bit larger than the inside size of a pea, split in half.

WOW!  Man was I feeling like a terrible mother right about then.

It was confirmed at the eye specialist.  There was a large circle abrasion on her eye, right over the cornea!  Both the pedi and the specialist were shocked that she had injured her eye so severely, in light of how she said it happened.  Which….by now I am sure you are really wondering too.  So let’s go back to Wednesday night…..the night before the field trip.

The Backstory: How She Hurt Her Eye

On Wednesday night the kids were very excited about their field trip next day, and were talking back and forth  in their bedroom (which is not unusual anyway.)  We heard them.  But next thing we know, {O} is out of the bedroom saying she has something in her eye.  This happens to {J} ALL of the time, because he always manages to rub his eye with his hand, and fold over his long eye lashes into the corners of his eye.  Michael was right there, so he took her in the bathroom and looked around in there….looking for anything:  a fuzzy, an eyelash…something in her eye.  Nothing.  So he told her to go back to bed, close her eyes, and go to sleep.  And that’s just what she did.

Of course…..as I told you in the field trip post, the next morning she was laughing and gabbing, but was keeping that eye closed.  So I asked her about it, she told me again that it felt like something was in it. That’s when I took another look, and only found what looked like that little sty.  But I asked her again then, why it started bothering her in bed the night before, and she said, “I don’t know.  I was laying on my belly, propped up on my elbows, with my hands under my pillow, and the boys were talking and they made me laugh.  When I laughed, I put my face down into my pillow, but I forgot to close my eyes first. (lol).  As soon as  I lifted up my head, it felt like there was something in my eye. “

As crazy as it sounds, to you, to me, to 2 doctors…..yes, she scratched her eye that badly, taking off a layer, with the top of her pillow!  I am sure she turned her face too….but still.  Who would think it?  I have advised her to close her eyes first next time….but you know….too-little-too-late-never-thought-to-give-her-that-advice-on-laughing, until now.

So…..the specialist put medicine in it, bandaged it up pretty good, and we were instructed to keep her still and quiet all day, and bring her back the next morning.  So on Saturday morning, I brought her back, after a sleepless night filled with guilt and fear my little girl would go blind from that sunny day at the orchards.  <sigh>.   By Saturday morning, the doctor said it had healed a little bit, and to spend another day doing the same (still, quiet and rest), take the patch off for Sunday, put ointment in it 3x a day,  and bring her back on Monday afternoon.

 

Love and Care

So here she is on that first Friday, she was really just wiped out.  It was just hard keeping one eye open, it was still hurting (if I asked her) and I think she was still recovering from all of the effort the day before at the orchards and out to lunch.  But what did do my heart so good, was to see how her siblings reacted to her being hurt.  They took such good care of her the whole weekend.  They laid with her, they got her a drink or a tissue when she needed it, they checked on her and kept quiet-ish for her.

They took turns helping to feed her, so she didn’t have to try and see where this or that was on her plate.

 

{S} worked so hard at the table for a good part of the day, making her seasonal flags to have around her to cheer her up. (If she opened her eyes, I guess.)  Above is the autumn one.  But yes, there was a spring, summer and winter one around her as well. (It bugs me that seasons are not supposed to be capitalized!  I was shocked when I learned that.  It still looks wrong to me.  Why are days of the week, and months of the year capitalized, but not seasons of the year?  But I digress.)  How sweet is that flag?

Oh…my sweet Girl.  When she was tired of lying down, she would sit up for awhile like this.

Sometimes, the kids would read her some of her favorite stories.

On Saturday, I let her get up and walk around a little.  Stretch her legs and get some air outside.  As long as she walked slowly and carefully, and remained quiet-ish.   She wasn’t as tired as she had been, so she was looking better to me.

Over the weekend, I had been conversing with a photographer/optometrist friend of mine online.  She told me ‘I have seen this kind of eye injury bring grown men to their knees, time and time again!  With an abrasion that big, I give them a prescription of  strong pain medications (she named a kind….which I wouldn’t remember), and it’s not unwarranted in cases like these.‘   I was shocked. And I felt even worse.

But that’s the thing about {O}.  She has always been a really tough cookie.   I recalled one of many examples, at a time when she was 2 or 3 years old….she had gotten that ‘nurse’s elbow’.  You know…where the elbow gets out of the socket somehow?  It needed to be re-set.  The doctor told her, “This is going to hurt, but it’s going to be fast.”  {O} said “O.K”…..and in that moment, I saw her go to another place.  Her eyes glazed over, and she like….mentally blocked out the pain.  Or something.  The doctor popped it, and she didn’t even as much as flinch.   The doctor  said  “WOW! <laugh>  She is one-tough-kid!  I have never done that in all of these years, without the child not crying after.  It really hurts!”  She’s something else.  To think she took on that big field trip and really made the best of her day too…..she’s something else.

Sunday we did indeed take the patch off, and kept ointment in it.  By Monday, it had really healed nicely. Which really just amazed me once again, about God’s amazing design of the human body, and it’s ability to heal as it often does.  Her eye is at some risk of re-injuring in the future, but usually that is the case with more of a deep abrasion.  She’s looking pretty much good as new, and I thank God for it!  Being a photographer, I do see a small inconsistency in the reflection on the surface of her  eyes when the light hits it just so, but no one else would likely ever notice that.  She did fail her recent vision test in that eye at her 7 year old check up, but she has a real eye doctor appointment coming up in early December, and I expect there will be a big improvement.

Thanks you so much, for reading this whole post, if you did.  It was seriously like therapy for me to type that out! <sigh>  We have been pretty crisis-free, considering we have 4 kids, so this was a BIGGIE in our family.  Especially for the head-worrier (as opposed to warrior, lol) of the family….ME!  But we got through it…….she’s ok……..and we thank God for His healing.

On a HUMOROUS NOTE:  Several days after she had gotten her patch off, she came to my bed in the morning, asking to have ‘a little cuddle”.  So I let her crawl into my bed, and we started talking.  She started telling me again how it happened that she hurt her eye, and in the process of literally showing me, she hit me square in the eye with her elbow.  I didn’t want her to know how much it hurt, so I acted like it didn’t.  But awhile later I had a black eye.  lol.  A few minutes later she came walking towards me talking…“Mama, do you think maybe later on I could….<sees me>……Oh SSHHOOT!” She was so cute…I just hugged and kissed her.  After what she had been through the past several days, I wasn’t about to complain about a black eye.

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