Call from the school

The dreaded call from the school, I am sure that all of us who have children know what I was feeling when the number for the school came up on my cell phone.  My heart started to beat faster, it seems that Adam had been poked in the eye at recess and was still in pain.  Would I come and look at it.  Of course I said and ran out the door of the office.

This is the day that Ed happens to be in Calgary, so I was on my own.  When I went to get Adam he seemed pretty good, sitting in a chair with an ice pack on his eye, but not in too much pain.  Whew, I thought, maybe it isn’t anything.  To be on the safe side I decided I would take him in to the walk in clinic, they saw us pretty quickly which was nice as Adam would not open his eye with out it causing him a lot of pain.  When the doctor saw us, he put a numbing drop in his eye and it was like a miracle, Adam could open his eye and was much more comfortable.  The doctor said that he could see a scratch on his cornea, he put a patch on Adam’s eye and gave me a prescription for some antiobiotic drops.  The doctor said that the numbing drops would last 6 hours and to give him tylenol if he needed it. 

We stopped at McDonalds on the way home for a treat, by the time we got home Adam was complaining that his eye was starting to hurt again.  I gave him the tylenol and then I started to worry.  How could his eye be hurting again?  It was supposed to be numb for 6 hours?  It just kept getting worse until he started to cry, and cry and cry.  It was awful, so what do you do when you don’t know what to do?  You call your mom.  So when I talked to them and tried to decide whether I should take him back to the doctor who had seen him or take him in to emergency, my dad (they both got on the speaker phone) suggested the eye doctor.  Now why didn’t I think of that in the first place? 

Off we went, to keep Adam distracted I put on a book on tape of Percy Jackson and the Lighting Thief.  Apparently it was a good book because as long as he was listening to that he wasn’t crying.  If I stopped it for any reason he started to cry again.  He kept his eyes closed the entire way down to the office and I led him everywhere. 

It took a long time to get in to see someone but finally we got in.  The first thing the optometrist did was to start to put the numbing drops in, I said oh wait the doctor put those drops in already.  He said well they only last 15 minutes so I will put some more in.  “What! they only last 15 min?  Well that explains why he is in so much pain!”  I was so relieved, I was starting to really get scared that there was something seriously wrong.  This optometrist was very comforting, put some dye in his eye to see the scratch and was amazed that it was as big as it was, I could definitely see it with the naked eye.  Wow, one little fingernail can do a lot of damage!  So instead of another patch they put a bandage contact lense on his eye.  He could sleep in it  and he gave me some antibiotic drops and sent us on our way with a follow up booked for morning.  He was so much better!

He ended sleeping for a while that afternoon and was not up for long or have any appetite that night.  I guess when you are in that much pain your body does not want to eat.

At the end of the day we were both exhausted and happy to see Ed come home.  Through out the entire day I was texting back and forth with him.  When Ed was young he had a detached retina and had to have eye surgery twice, to fix it.  So when I told him it was Adam’s eye that was hurt he went in to panic mode. 

Who knew that we could get so worked up about a finger in the eye.  Here is picture of him with my sunglasses on, his eyes were light sensitive.

The contact came out on Saturday morning and he has been doing great!  Whew!  The excitement never ends.