The Borders of Things

On the virtue of protective lenses . . .

On Monday afternoon, I was playing racquetball for the second time in my life. I am not the most athletic of individuals (although of course you would never guess this from my carved physique) and so it usually takes me a while to get my coordination down. The tragic result of this learning curve was a racquetball straight to the left eye at point blank range.

Now, I was wearing my regular glasses and had assumed this would provide enough protection. However, I was mistaken. Both lenses were knocked out and sent spinning across the court. When I took my hand off my eye, it looked like blood had smeared down onto it and I was afraid I had cut myself. My comrades told me that this was not the case. However, I knew that something was wrong as they proceeded to become fuzzier and fuzzier. By the time I made it to the locker room, it was as if a white sheet had been laid on top of my left eye. I could see light and changes in light, but that was it.

Since the campus drop-in center was closed, I walked to the emergency room. This was about 530 pm, and the place was packed. There was an elderly lady in a stretcher and any number of fevers, headaches, and sprains. To top it off, an already admitted patient began fighting with his doctor in an attempt to flee the hospital. I could see him swinging his shoes at the security guard, who was all but helpless as the patient was three time the guard's size. He finally made good at his escape, but they called the cops and got him back.

I tried to call Capria on the security phone, since the guard had taken the courtesy phone for some reason. Unfortunately, I could only get out that I was at the emergency room and I couldn't see before the guard returned and kicked me off. Fortunately, she was able to find me a little while later.

I noticed a sign that said "triage" on the door. This was not comforting when I was one of the first people to be called back, long before the many others who had been there before me. The nurse took a look at my eyes and asked me if I had always had one blue eye and one brown eye.

"No," I said.

She laughed. "You do now." I looked in the mirror and, sure enough, it was brown.

So to cut the rest of the story, they sent me up to ophthalmology where they did a series of examinations, including a ultrasound on my eye to check for retinal damage. They told me that I had blood in my eye, technically called a hyphema. Here is a rather large picture of an eye with a hyphema. The thing is, my eye was 60-70 percent full of blood, while this person probably only has maybe 20%. So that gives you an idea of how it looked. And that was also why I couldn't see and my eye appeared brown.

So, two days and steroid, dilating, and inter-ocular pressure reducing drops later, I can see much better. Although everything is still a bit fuzzy. I celebrated by renting the entire first season of The Sopranos last night. We got through the first of four disks. What a great show.

Also, the med students loved me. Everyone wanted to take a look at it. It was pretty cool, I have to admit. But I am not playing another sport with out true protective glasses.

Posted by pjaussen at August 10, 2005 03:14 PM | TrackBack