To See or Not to See

So last Thursday while I am out to lunch with my sister Susy I get a very distressed phone call from my poor husband. I barely get out a "hello" before Mark starts ranting about getting something in his eye at work and how he's ticked off and can't see and doesn't even know how he's driving right now, etc, etc. I (being the super loving and concerned wife that I am) calmly tell him that if he can't see, then he definitely doesn't need to be on the phone while driving - he needs to go home, flush his eye out with water and call me later (when I'm done having lunch with Susy) if it's not better. He agrees with my sage advice and goes home and flushes his eye out, but he's still in so much pain that he just takes pain meds and falls asleep.

He wakes up around 4pm and feels even worse. So he calls me again and tells me the steps he's taken to no avail, so I tell him he needs to go to the eye doctor. Now perhaps I should have begun this tale by explaining the deathly terror that Mark experiences with anything going near his eyes. He doesn't touch his eye, he doesn't use eye drops, he faints at the sight of contact lenses. (You get the idea.) So naturally he does not want to go to the doctor. I tell him that I'm calling right now to make an appointment and remember how much you liked Dr Uwe Canting when we went last year and you'll be fine and John will drive you and that you're going, the end. (You see how sometimes just having a husband makes you feel like you have kids?) The doctor's office says they can work him in if he comes asap, so John takes my 6'6" baby boy to the doctor.

While I'm closing up at work around 5:30 I get another call from him and he tells me (unusually calmly, I might add) that it turns out he has metal on his iris and it is rusting in his eye and that they have to get the ophthalmologist to come and surgically remove it or it could cause permanent damage and possible blindness. What?! How did this happen? I am a terrible and flippant wife. Although I did convince him to go to the doctor, so maybe I'm not so bad. The doctor told me that if he hadn't gone in that night he probably would've lost his eye completely. And though an eye-patched pirate husband would have been kind of sexy, I am happy that he still has both of those big, beautiful green eyes of his. So after 4 Valium, a blessing, and lots of hand holding the metal was removed, eye drops were administered, and a contact lens band-aid was applied. (I can hardly believe that he survived it all.)

His vision is still pretty blurry in his right eye and the doctor said that it may be 2-4 weeks before his vision goes back to normal. We go back this afternoon for another follow-up appointment and they are hoping that he will be healed enough to remove the contact lens. But I have a feeling that it will take another 4 Valium, a blessing, and lots of hand holding to get that contact lens out!