Knitting Proves Dangerous

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my first knitting class. It was only for two Saturdays, for two hours each, but I learned quite a bit. I took the class at the yarn store on the square in Lawrenceville. The store is called the Yarn Garden, and they have a truly beautiful selection of yarns.

My teacher gave each student a pattern for a shawl to make as a suggestion for our next project. She also sold me four balls of this really pretty white yarn that is made out of bamboo. I've been diligently knitting my shawl all week long.

Thursday night, my husband and I were watching my Netflix movie, "Wonderland" with Val Kilmer, and I was knitting along on my shawl. After the movie was over, we went up to bed. I noticed my right eye felt itchy, so I put in some gel drops my eye doctor had given me for severe dryness. I had LASIK surgery four years ago, and sometimes my eyes are dry. I fell immediately asleep.

At about 2:30, I woke up and my eye was killing me. I put more gel drops in my eye, and it felt even worse. I went to the bathroom sink and tried washing my eye out with water. It was hurting something fierce. I realized I couldn't really open it or close it without immense pain. I also realized that I couldn't see out of that eye much at all. Everything looked smudged and blurry. I started freaking out thinking my LASIK surgery had popped open, or who knows what. My husband at this time gets out of bed because he can hear me frantically trying to take care of my eye. I asked him to see if there was something in it, and he thought it looked like a film was over my eye. He said it was probably a bamboo filament from my yarn. I think he was right.

At this point we head to the ER. I wake the kids up before we go to let them know we will be out of the house for a couple of hours, but to just go back to sleep. We get to the ER about five minutes later. I'm bawling and shaking the whole way there and in the waiting room because my eye hurts so bad. About 30 minutes after we arrive, the nurse calls me back, asks me what's up and then puts Novacaine in my eye. She told me I may be waiting a while, but that the medicine would numb my eye so I should be OK to wait. I think when she put the medicine in my eye that it jarred the fiber, or whatever it was, loose because all of the sudden I could blink again. At this point I feel so much better that I am wondering if I should just go home and go to the eye doctor in the morning. We tell the admissions nurse that we are thinking of doing this, but she says that the Novacaine will wear off in 30 minutes and I'll be right back in pain again. I tell her I can wait 30 minutes. I just didn't want to be waiting in the waiting room for three hours.

They call me back into a room about 15 minutes later. I told the nurse that I was pleasantly surprised to be called back so soon. A doctor eventually comes into the room, puts some dye in my eye and looks at it under a black light. He says the fiber must have come out already because he can't see it. He does see that my eye is "scuffed" underneath the pupil. He prescribes me some Vicodin and antibiotic drops that I am supposed to put in my eye every four hours for the next seven days. He also says to go to my eye doc within the next 48 hours.

We go home and go to bed. I don't have my drugs yet because it's the middle of the night, but I find some old painkiller in the medicine cabinet and take that and conk out for the rest of the night.

In the morning, my husband drove Teddy into school and stopped by the eye doctor's office on the way home to see their hours. Wouldn't you know, they are closed on Thursdays. Figures. He comes home to tell me this, and I ask him to go get my medicine from CVS. He brings it home and I start on the antibiotic drops. He called his boss to tell her that he will be in after lunch since he lost a half a night's sleep. She tells him to just take the whole day off. Lucky him!

I pretty much slept yesterday away. The Vicodin really knocks me out, and when it starts to wear off, my eye would hurt again.

I woke up this morning and it feels a lot better. I called the eye doctor and he can see me at 5:15 today. I think my vision is almost back to normal again, thank God.

Who would have thought a little ball of yarn could cause so much pain?