Well....good early morning everyone...my posts will be very limited today and forgive me for errors possibly contained within. I had a bad episode last night with my eye flaring up and it seems to happen on average once a week. I see the specialist tomorrow. I woke at 1am and my right eye was screaming and tearing and I slept it off until 5am so here I am. I cannot read anything in front of me with the eye when it does this now...not even the letters on the keys, so I'm basically one eyed for the next week until my vision naturally restores itself over time from healing and not re-aggravating this old injury.
For those of you here who dont know....I'll tell this story one more time.
In 1995, a year after I bought my car you've seen on my website, I had a stereo dropped into it and modified some to a degree where I entered into IASCA which is International Auto Sound Championship Association. Since I dropped a ton of money into this car I figured on entering a few contests locally and won them all. There was to be an event 2 hours away in my old hometown in upstate NY, so the weekend before it happened (on a Sunday) I parked the car in my garage and detailed it to a T.
The Saturday night before I was to drive there in the morning, I was just finishing up padding my trunk with some grey carpeting you'd see on speaker boxes. I was using a large exacto knife or utility knife to cut the pieces of course and all was looking great! I knew I'd win the next day but then something happened that forever changed my life for the worse.
As I was cutting with this exacto knife, It got dull and in order to make it sharp again you have to break the blade to get a new piece. I always used pliers or would snap it on the ground and drive on. This time I did it I used the smooth garage concrete floor and when it snapped off, the quarter sized piece ricocheted off a wall and hit my right eye.
I was stunned at 1st and didnt realize what happened, so I pulled the blade, which punctured and sliced my eyeball in the 7 o'clock position just in the white area of my cornea southwest of my retina. I dropped the blade and ran downstairs to my room and bathroom and looked in the mirror and saw a nice BB sized blood blister forming where it hit me. I felt no real pain at all, but I finished up the car since it was late and everything was still a go for the next day despite my eye.
I woke up real early so I could touch up my car at 6am and hit the road for the 2 hour drive. I felt a small lump on the eye and it looked a little worse than the night before, but I was a trooper and decided to go since it wasnt affecting my vision and wasnt hurting....just weird to feel a lump on your eyeball when you look left and right. I started the car and got it idling in the garage, packed a few things and I'm off...NOT!!! I pressed the gas an I was in drive, but the car didnt move. Yep, you guessed it, my tensioner had snapped on startup and for those who dont know...you need this to drive your belts around in order to MOVE! So here I am on a Sunday morning at 630 am revving my engine in my garage with a messed up eye and my belts arent moving at all since my tensioner snapped and just layed there.
I called a tow truck and since it WAS Sunday....nothing was open...so I was screwed! I was pissed off something fierce and when I did finally get to a Pep Boys 20 miles away, they got it fixed by noon....which is when I would be probably winning a trophy and cash for 1st place in that show! I wound up driving to Scranton a few miles away and stopped into my car stereo place to chat and they noticed the eye and pleaded me to go to the hospital...so I finally went. I checked into ER at Mercy Hospital and they did the usual routines and flushed the eye and looked at it under UV light and made their assessments. I checked out of there about 45 mins later and had a prescription for eye drops. They had this Vasoline crap over my eye and a patch so I couldnt see. They advised no driving...lol no TV and not much else for 24 hours. I drove myself home and then just went about life in June of 1995 as always.
I woke up one morning weeks and months later and noticed my right eye stung slightly and thought nothing of it, but knew it was the eye that was injured and I would roll over and in a matter of minutes of not moving the eye or re-waking, it would be perfectly fine. I had small occasions like that on and off for the next few years, but it got worse and worse as the years passed. In 1998 I got a job at AT&T doing work on their computers and talking to irate customers in their custome asistance dept and also Directory Assistance. Remember Double O Info? Dial 00 and you got me! lol. Anyhow I had insurance for vision now with this company and took advantage of the eye condition thing when I'd wake in the mornings every so often with stinging and some watering.
One day I woke up in the morning and the eye was searing with pain, much like someone putting a cigarette out on your eyeball. Its hard to describe, but I'd much rather have a terrible toothache anyday compared! This time I had to go into work, but I tried the old quick sleep it off thing, but it didnt work this time. It was real sunny outside as well and going into work facing the sun and having dark sunglasses on all day made me have a runny nose from my eye stinging and killing me bigtime.
I had to go to a special Northeast Eye Institute here right on the same street I worked on and check in. They ran new tests and looked a little closer at all the problems I've been having over a few years now of sporadic wakings and this happening to me. They found nothing much, gave me lubricating drops and let me go. I didnt realize they dialated my eye with a drop and then the light REALLY enters your pupil 100 times worse since the black part doesnt close now! I got through the day and the pain waned and I was ok on the drops and medications they gave me for awhile longer anyhow.
2001 rolls around and still having more problems and more numerous occurances of this waking and being stung and watering etc. The tears produced act as putting salt on an open wound and believe me, if you were ever poked in the eye, its no fun. Imagine how I feel? Its like someone slicing my eye with a fingernail and then pouring alcohol on it when I woke sometimes. I endured the pain and kept with the drops and so forth but I now was about to lose insurance due to our job at AT&T were about to transform into a deaf teletype relay center. You had to type accurately 60 wpm and with my eye the way it was I failed the test a few times and got close, but they didnt see eye to eye (lol pun), so I quit and moved on. I can type fast, and never took a lesson in my life, but they screwed me...so onward!
I got this computer in 2000 in December and was tooling around back then on sites and so forth and now I had more time to spend and money wasnt a real problem for me, so I was ok. I still woke to searing pains now, but at least I didnt have to report to anyone and I could go to a hospital or eye clinic and get looked at if need be, right away. Seems like all of 2001 and into 2002 I had this new thing happening now...my vision would become blurred ever so slightly. This totally freaked me out and I saw a specialist who is a big man in the region in eye care.
This is the guy I see on the 13th of March for the laser possibilities. I could only take so much pain and again leading up to today I've had some tough times with this damn eye. It swells up anymore when I have even a slight sting and I cant read or see much of anything out of it....it looks like a clear film but opaque...almost a double vision. This doc says that the eye is just swelling around the area of the initial injury and that this 'abrasion' just flares up and reopens.
It only happens in the mornings when I'm subconsciously trying to open and wipe the sleep away. I've been on these lubricating drops, medicated ones and 4 others since last August since this swelling, blurring and massive stinging is relentless when it happens, but nothing has cured me.
Thats when this doc mentioned a laser 'correction' where they zap the area, is painless and they can do it in a few minutes. The old days of this would hurt like you wouldnt believe, and I'm glad this procedure is available to me now. Trouble is I dont know the costs yet, but its 98% effective and he said I'll never wake to pain and misery again. I dont care what it costs really...I can pay for that kind of comfort.
Trust me, from where I've come with this damn eye being the way it is, has annoyed me and made life so much tougher. Its bizarre that I never know when it happens...it just does. The sting goes away, but I'm left with 20/100,000 in the eye opposed to my normal 20/15.
I thought being hit by lightning in 1986 was bad and then later that summer in 1995 right after this happened was worse...I got hurt that time, and then in 1997 as well. While I see no correlation with being hit twice after the eye injury, it just makes life miserable and tomorrow I will be in the docs office to discuss prices and get this done and have this over hopefully once and for all.
I hope you enjoyed Rob's little story time theatre...stay tuned for more follow ups. Hey....who said living in pain could keep me from doing what I love? I love to write and have had quite a few of these novels posted on other sites as well...The ones over at TWC were lost forever and I had a long one for my dog who was put to sleep in November this past year and also my snowblower incident in January of this year. I try to capture the ones still left like the Superstorm of 1993 and also the being hit by lightning one, and there's so many others out there as well...so bear with me and I hope I can relay more in the future.
Remember, I'm doing all of this with one eye....you try it and see how far you can go...lol Its not easy, and painful to boot.
I'm currently sending Ticka a novel relating to all of my life experiences regarding snow events...from my youth to today..so be on the lookout for that next piece. This post might be one of the more larger ones on here written out from the hip, but again, I'm all about quality not quantity. Have a blessed day and may life be grand for you as it has been for me!
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I did paper cut my eye in the fifth grade. That's the closest i've come to what you experience. I hope it gets better.
