Patch

As my husband headed away to his retreat, I headed to what Matthew refers to as, "The Pumpkin Pie Patch." Thanks to the snow and sleet and general merriment of obnoxious weather, the Pumpkin Pie Patch was horribly muddy. I stood in its dirt parking lot for several minutes trying to remove the layers of cake-like mud that were encasing the soles of our shoes when we were finished. Still, they were covered so we all drove home barefoot. When we got here I resumed my job of banging the ever loving life out of all three pairs.

When I got to mine, which were, by far, the worst, I was really getting a workout. Thud! The contact reverberated through my wrists and up into my forearms. Thud! This went on for quite some time and then, suddenly, THUD!

I saw the object flying toward my eye. I tried to get it closed in time, really I did. Never before did I think that shoe banging was the type of thing that required safety goggles. Clearly, I was misinformed about the versatility of plastic glasses. I felt a rather searing pain at the same time that my youngest son walked into the still open car door and began to sob. Clutching my eye I glanced in his direction, "I'm sorry, bud. I can't help you, something is stuck in my eye." I rushed to the nearest bathroom. 

A rather largish pebble was lodged in the corner of my eye, nasal side, as though suspended in a hammock. I tried to pull it out. I tried to blink it out. If I moved my eye in the slightest of directions, it began to drift toward the iris and pupil. After several painful minutes, I managed to get it out. For a few blissful moments, I felt no pain. I took the stairs quickly and removed my contact lens before flushing my eye with saline. When I'd finished cleaning it out, I blinked several times. It began to feel irritated.

I tried to ignore it for awhile but an uncomfortable pain was simply not going away and it was going on 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. I decided to head to the eye doctor.

He put all manner of liquid into my eye and stared at it from all directions. A swab removed dirt particles and he was hopeful that's all that was causing the pain. I'm not quite as optimistic since it still hurts. He sent me home with some eye lubricant antibiotic and told me to come see him tomorrow morning if it hurts worse.

But seriously. This parenting gig, who knew that a trip to the pumpkin patch could end with a pebble lodged in the eye?