My Bad Day

I was reading about Emil's "good day" and it reminded me about a day I had a few years ago.  I thought you might find it interesting.  This day started out as a project I had assembling a large storage shed in my back yard.  I had started on the project the day before, but it was a large project and I hadn't finished it.  I built the floor and was still working on it.  During the day my children showed up to help and I accomplished quite a bit.  It got dark, so I decided to start putting stuff away in case it might rain.  I didn't have any light in the back yard and while walking around the shed, I managed to walk straight into a tree branch.  It was so dark, that I didn't see it at all, but felt the branch hit the dead center of my eye and slide up to the top of my eyeball.  It is amazing how far your head can lag behind your feet when a stick contacts your eye.

It didn't feel like I had injured my eye, but it felt as though something was in it.  I immediately went inside the house to get the foreign object out of my eye.  I asked my wife to look and see what was in my eye, but she said that she didn't see anything.  As anyone who has ever had something in their eye can tell you, it is quite difficult to get your eye to stay open long enough to get a good look at the offending object. I managed to get my eye open long enough to see that I didn't have a foreign object in my eye, but a nasty scrape across the center of my eye.  "Well I guess we need to get to the hospital." I told Judy.  Before we left, I asked my daughter, Candace, to cut off the branch, and the rest of my children to put the rest of the stuff away.  My wife led me out to the car and we were off to the hospital.  In the emergency room a nurse asked a lot of silly questions and asked me to fill out a bunch of paperwork.
Me - "I got poked in the eye with a stick, and my other eye isn't co-operating very well."
Nurse - "I still have to have the forms filled out."
Judy fills out the paperwork.

Finally it was my turn to go in the back to see a doctor.  The first thing the doctor says is "We may have to put some dye in your eye to see the scratch."  I informed him that even with my compromised vision, I managed to see it even with only a momentary glimpse at it.  "Well, lets take a look." he says, and then "Oh, we won't need the dye."  Next he wants me to take a vision exam.  "Look at the chart and read the first line." he says.  "Which chart, there are 2 of them." I say. "Cover your good eye and tell me what you see." he says.  "Well I can tell there is a chart, but that's about it." I said.

Then a nurse put some ointment in my eye, put a bunch of cotton on top of my eyelid and mashed it down real hard so it hurt as much as possible.  Then she says, "Don't take this off until you see an eye doctor.  We don't have any pain medicine to give you for it, but the doctor will write you a prescription for antibiotics and pain medicine to get from the drugstore. Please go back to the waiting room and we'll get that prescription out to you in a minute."

My wife and I go out to the waiting room to see my daughter, Candace, and her boyfriend, Louis, there.  The conversation goes like this.
Me - "You guys didn't need to come down to see me, I'll be out of here in a few minutes."
Candace - "We didn't come to see you."
Me - "Well why are you here then?"
Candace, showing me a cut on her finger - "I cut my finger cutting the tree branch."
Me - "Well it doesn't really look that bad."
Candace - "Oh we are here because Louis dropped a sheet of plywood on his toe."
Me - "Is it that bad?"
Louis - "It feels like it is broken."
Judy - "This has been a really bad day!"
Nurse - "Mr. Toy, I have your prescription".
Me - "Well, lets get to the store so I can get something for this pain."
Outside the emergency room, as I pull off the eye patch, I tell Judy, "This is stupid, it is only causing more pain and I can't stand to open my eye anyway."

Ok, off to the store then.  Only 1 drug store is still open at this time.  We give the prescription to the druggist and after about 10 minutes she informs us that she has the antibiotics but will have to order the pain medicine.  "Sorry," she says, "the best suggestion I can give you is to take some Tylenol."  "Thanks, a lot." I said.

We get home and I take 4 Tylenol and try to relax.  The phone rings, it is the hospital.  Judy answers and I hear.  "What?" "Ok, I'll be there in a few minutes."  "What was that about?" I ask.  Judy tells me, "The hospital needs me to sign a permission form for Candace. Don't worry about it, you just relax, and I'll take care of it."
My wife returns in about 30 minutes. She tells me, "Candace was in the exam room with Louis.  She saw his smashed toe, fainted, fell and hit her head on the wall.  They wanted to make sure she didn't get a skull fracture.  She was fine when I got there, so we told them she didn't need an x-ray." "How is Louis' toe?, I ask. "It is broken.", Judy said.  "We need to go to bed before anything else happens."  I said

The next morning Judy calls a couple of eye doctors in the phone book.  She leads me to the car and drives me over to his office and leads me inside.  The eye doctor asks a few questions about my injury and the treatment the Hospital gave me.  This is how the conversation went.
Me - "I took off the eye patch they put on me because it was making it hurt worse."
Doctor - "That ok, your eye doesn't need to be bandaged to heal and if it hurts worse it isn't helping at all.  What medicine did they give you?"
I hand him him the medicine.
Doctor - "This antibiotic is wrong.  You need one that includes an anti-fungal ingredient or you may get a fungus infection."
Me - "They didn't have the pain medicine."
Doctor - "Do you have the prescription?"
Judy hands him the prescription.
Doctor - "Lets see, oh no, this is only for one time use,  It is a good thing for you they didn't have it,  If you had used this for 24 hours it may have caused you to lose the sight in that eye."
Me - "Why did they prescribe the wrong medicines?"
Doctor - "Most ER doctors don't know much about eye treatment, that's why they told you to see an eye doctor as soon as possible."

He gave me new prescriptions.  Judy took me to a different drugstore and got my medicine.  I missed a couple of days of work, till the pain was tolerable.  I still had trouble with that eye about once a month for about a year.
Oh, I got my shed finished by the next weekend