eye-yi-yi! chemical burn
November 5th, 2009 -- Posted in family, pain / disability | Comments OffSo I have been a little quiet this week, and here’s why: on Tuesday I went for a little snooze and then afterwards stumbled around to get ready for a shower. I was unfortunately too brain dead to realize that I was rinsing my contact lens with the unfamiliar-bought-on-mega-sale contact solution instead of my regular contact solution (that I’ve been using for well over a decade!). Until the burning searing pain hit after popping that contact into my right eye!!!
So… note to self and others:
1. Don’t buy unfamiliar contact solution unless you’ve researched what it is. Especially if you have been using the same stuff and brand for a looooong time and have been a contact lens wearer since “back in the day” when there were blue bottles and red bottles, and disinfectant solution came in red bottles.
2. Don’t buy stuff just because it’s on sale. Even if you’re going through severe financial difficultly and are trying to penny pinch. Sometimes it’s on sale because it sucks. The big labels wrapped around the bottle with “NEW INSTRUCTIONS:” warnings should’ve been my first guess this product was bad news for me.
3. If you ever have the misfortune of putting a contact lens just rinses with chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide, rinse your eyes right away for a long time. Like minutes and minutes. Because if you only rinse for a minute, even though that *feels* like forever, it’s not enough time and you will just have to call poison control and have them tell you to do it.
4. If you are disabled and have spinal injuries and need to rinse out an eye for 15 minutes, do it in the shower. Keep your jammies on to stay warm though because it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to rinse your eye with warm-hot water. Stick with lukewarm. Oh and bring in a bath pillow if you have it because then you can rest your head on it because you’ll need to tilt it sideways so the water can rinse out the inside of your eyelid.
5. If your preteen is in a selfish stage, you need to actually scream her or his *name* to get any chance of help. Otherwise they will disregard general screams of injury and distress. Better yet, make it about them (e.g. “hey Harmony, want to gape at my bright red eye?”), that’s all they really care about anyways.
Can you tell I’m having a “FML” kind of week?
(((sigh)))
I really need some good news or positive happenings to come in my direction soon.
