Slightly scary warning

On Wednesday, something blew into my eye. Just some airborne dust or something, nothing big. It hurt like it does when you get something in your eye, but I thought nothing of it.

As expected, the discomforted faded within half an hour or so, leaving just that slightly dry, gritty sensation that you always get for a while after having had something in your eye. Except that sensation didn't really go away. Then yesterday my eye felt a bit bad, and I thought I'd sunburnt it because I'd forgotten about the incident of getting something in my eye. I was trying to think how you sunburn just one eye before I remembered the airborne dust incident. I figured if its still hurting on Monday, I'll make an appointment at the GP's surgery to see if I can get a nurse to have a look.

Now for the slightly scary warning bit. Driving back from my dad's earlier today, my eye was really hurting, much worse than it had been, but my vision seemed absolutely fine. As far as I was concerned, both eyes were functioning normally, even if one was hurting. Then I realised I was concentrating a lot harder than usual, and turning my head a lot more when normally my peripheral vision would suffice. I realised I was working extra hard to judge distance, and that I was regularly checking where the left side of the car was relative to the side of the road, something that I normally wouldn't even consciously think of. Then, on a clear, wide road, at only about 20mph, boom! I curbed the car. I've never curbed a car before, except maybe when misjudging parking once or twice.

I realised that then that my left eye wasn't doing very much. My right eye was doing all the work, giving me what I incorrectly perceived to be clear vision. I could see clearly through my right eye, but I had severely compromised spacial awareness (you need both eyes to work to see proper 3D). My brain was doing what brains do very well, it was attempting to compensate, hence the sense that I was having to concentrate harder than usual.

I went straight to the local hospital. They wasted no time. Before even having a proper look, they washed my eye out with saline, which had a profound effect. I'd had sort of milky/foggy/blurry vision in that eye, and after the saline wash it cleared up quite a lot almost immediately. They then poked all sorts of swabby things in my eye, even having a look right inside between the eyeball and whatever surrounds it. I had my eye lids turned inside out and all sorts. Then I had some dye poured into it so my vision turned amber, and they shone a bright light in there, looking for scratches or other tissue damage. Finally they washed it out again with saline. The conclusion: They found some inflammation on the inside of my left eyelid, and my eye is a bit bloodshot, but they could see no physical injury or foreign body. No definite sign of infection but they think that's what it is. They advised me to buy some over the counter eye potion thingy and to see if it gets better, and if it doesn't by Monday, then go to my regular GP.

So the warning then. If there's something wrong with one of your eyes, even if you think your vision is unaffected, test that before driving by closing your good eye and seeing what you can still see. Without realising it I drove home from my dad's with just one eye working and virtually no spacial awareness. I didn't even realise it until after I bounced the car. Lucky I only hit the curb. I overtook at least 2 cyclists on the way home too, imagine how much worse it could have been.

 

Phew!

Thank goodness your eye isn't permanently damaged and thank goodness no one was hurt.

Is it fully healed now Clue?

 

Glad the optics are all okay now.

I once got a tiny shard of plastic in my eye after struggling to open a box of stock at Staples, the box practically exploded in my face! So everytime I blinked it scraped over my eye, had it about three days. Couldn't see it at all and then realised it was transparent plastic, ending up extracting it with tweezers, the wife couldn't watch.

 

Its well on the road to recovery now

nFrost, I once clipped a piece of .2 gauge wire (only thin stuff) and the clipped bit flew up and went through my eye lid and into my eye. Fortunately not deep though. This happened at college where I was studying electronics. The tutor didn't know what to do, so advised I keep still while he gets help. My eye was pinned half open. After a few minutes I got sick of waiting, and just pulled the wire out. Some eye drops and a cold compress in the first aid room sorted it out. Its funny really, nothing became of that, yet this time a lesser injury had much worse impact. Maybe I'm getting old.

 

Blummin' 'eck! Didn't you have your goggles on?! hahaha. No blood?

 

That was a bit of an escape there! Great advice

 

I think I might have had safety glasses on, but they were probably raised up on my forehead so that I could see better.