Public Service Announcement

Yea, I know...It's been a while.  But I'm just gonna pretend that I haven't missed a day.  How about all 3 of us pretending that too because what I have to tell now could potentially save someone some serious agony.

K?

Moving on...

Last Thursday I kept my friend's kiddos while they went to see Allison Krauss.  Now, I would love to have seen Allison Krauss but....wait, that's not what this is about.
We had a great time while they were here.  We made individual pizzas for dinner. (that's always a hit!)

Then I safely loaded the kids into the back of the 4-Runner, rolled down the window and drove them < 1 mile to the neighbors farm. Contrary to the looks on all of their faces they were having a blast, unrestrained in the back of the truck.

We went there to see and bottle feed this new calf, Smokey.  It's momma had twins and she abandoned this one.  The owners are hand raising it.  How sweet is that??

 There are also beagles at this farm and poor Smokey played second fiddle to the pups.

After playing at the farm for a bit, we came home, got a deep clean in the tub, jammas on, hair and teeth brushed and then I remembered I had bought each of the kids a glow stick wand.  That's when things turned ugly...

(I bought one for A too, the cute blondie in the dress above, but forgot to take it to the farm with us.  This is hers.  Her Dad told me to just keep it after "the incident")

I busted out the glow sticks to cheering and applause.  I broke and shook them to get them glowing good and bright.  Then I attached each of the hard plastic things. Maya had a flower, G had a butterfly and E had a sword. His hard plastic piece was the handle for the sword.  The girl's pieces were on the top like the heart in the pic above.

They were playing and whooping it up in the play room when E ran into the living room, holding his sword high.  He proclaimed that I was to be a mean monster.  I needed to chase him back to the play room where he would protect the princesses with his sword.  How could I resist?  So growling and stomping I chased him to the playroom.  Just as I stepped in front of the door, through which was coming lots of screaming and laughing, it happened..

Maya held her wand firmly and cast a spell on the mean monster.  What a spell that was! The hard plastic flower flew from the end of the wand and bashed me in the eye. Yes, I said, "bashed me in the eye"! I screamed, Maya cried, Mike freaked out and poor little G & E were piled in the corner wide eyed and scared to death.  I heard/felt a pop when it hit.  I was sure my eyeball had ruptured.  I felt it in the back of my head it hurt sooooo badly!!!!!

I ran to the living room at which point I nearly collapsed.  I fell to my knees with my hands over my eye and my head on the couch sobbing.  Mike went and confiscated the hard plastic pieces from all the sticks and checked to see if the kids were alright.  I on the other hand was still a wreck and afraid to take my hand from my eye.  When I was finally able to gain a small bit of composure I pulled my hand away to find it full of [GRAPHIC ALERT] watery blood. I thought for sure it was the contents of my eyeball. Mike turned an ugly shade of pale and got a little wobbly. Between the two of us, we were able to get me up out of the floor and to the bathroom mirror.  What was in my hand was blood from the gash over my eye and tears and not the leaking contents of my eyeball.

And then there was the dark/blurry spot in my field of vision.  Mike kept asking over and over, "can you see? CAN YOU SEE?".  Well, yes, I could see but with a slice of my visual field kinda blanked out.

I was leaving the next morning to go to a Women of Joy conference with my girls from church.  So I mulled over going to the ER or not.  I chose not. The gash was small and stopped bleeding quickly.  I am a RN and who is worse at taking care of themselves than those that provide health care to others...the old "do as I say, not as I do" adage is so relevant...

(the culprit. Photo courtesy of Julie)

Throughout the weekend we had fun making light of my "bad eye" and spoke pirate-y a lot, Aaarrggh!  And the dark/fuzzy spot went away, mostly.  Strangely enough, it was worse in the dark. 

Then I awoke Monday morning with a migraine.  Now, I do get a migraine from time to time.  And I take a medication that is "off label" used for migraines but I take it for it's intended purpose and think that I get the added benefit of it helping out with my migraines.  I forgot to take all my meds with me over the weekend.  So I could 98% contribute the migraine to being without my meds all weekend.  I took Maya to school then came home, took my  Rx med and some migraine meds.  When I woke back up, my vision was all wonky.  I don't usually get visual disturbances with my migraines except for light sensitivity so I freaked out.  I called my doc; out of town this week.  I called my eye doc; out of the office this week.  What the heck, man?!!  So I called Maya's eye doc and they got me right in.  (Love you Drs Whittington & Whittington. You will be my new eye doc!!!)

Dr Hall checked out my eyes.  This is what he said: I have no rips or detachments (thank you, Jesus).  I was probably having muscle spasms due to the impact. And/or I had a floater that got shaken from it's usual spot and I could now see it because it is in a new place.  I do have lots of floaters.  He said that you get used to them when they stay in one spot and you don't really notice them.  But if one gets moved around you will notice it for a while until you get used to it being in it's new spot.  He dilated my eyes with some super duper dilator that kept me dilated for 3 days to relax the muscles.

Today my black eye is almost gone and is more like a lovely shade of yellow.  My pupils are just about the same size and my vision is almost 100%.  I still see my newly placed floater occasionally but nothing like I was seeing.

I said all of that to say this...DO NOT attach the hard plastic pieces on these glow stick wands.  Glow sticks are fun and pretty.  I love them.  The big ones that make up these wands are awesome.  I would have never guessed that that little piece of plastic could cause this kind of damage.  I thank God that it was me that got hit and that Maya was the one that hit me.  If the same thing had happened to one of the kiddos I honestly think it could have blinded them.