Theme of the Week: Freaky Ass Eye Injuries (NOT for those with weak stomachs!)

[JuniorMintz]

...

I'm serious. The third story actually had me dry heaving when it happened, so you've been warned.

I'm ranking them in order of least to most yucky, so here goes.

1. A 16 year old hard contact lens wearer came in with her mom, and her face and right eye were completely swollen. Poor kid was hit *directly* in the right eye, and the lens shattered into a whole bunch of pieces... eek! I shivered when I heard about it... my boss was able to perform an extraction, but that must have been SO scary and painful for the poor girl! She'll be fine, but yeesh, talk about awful luck!

2. A lady came in for her *routine* eye exam, and I knew we were in for it when she walked in and had a huge piece of gauze taped onto her eye. Apparently her eye had been sore for a few weeks, but she didn't mention anything when she had booked her appointment about two weeks ago. When the doctor pulled the gauze off her eye, there was a massive amount of mucus stuck to it, and there were long strings of it still stuck to the cloth as she pulled it away. As if that weren't bad enough, her eye was freaking bulging out of the socket by at *least* a half inch, if not an inch. The doctor FREAKED (well, on the inside anyway) and told her to go to ophthalmologyNOW! I have no idea what the hell was wrong, but if I *personally* had to make a guess I'd say maybe an ocular ulcer? Either way if this had been going on for weeks, why the fuck would anyone wait the way she did?!? It boggles my mind, it really does.

And now for the kicker...

3. A new patient that we had fit for soft contact lenses a few months ago called and told us he had a lens stuck on his eye and he wanted help taking it out. No big deal, it happens sometimes and it's an easy fix usually.

Except when the guy came in, his eyes were scratched ALL to hell. It was soooo bad, it looked like a gross special effect from a zombie movie or something.

We get him in the chair, and the guy was still convinced there was a contact lens in there- apparently he had been DIGGING and SCRATCHING at his own eye for hours before he finally called us. The doctor looks at his eye in the slit lamp...

And not only is there no contact lens...


There is no cornea.

There is NO. CORNEA.

NO CORNEA.

NO MOTHERFUCKING CORNEA!!!

He scratched and clawed his ENTIRE FUCKING CORNEA OUT! GONE! NOOOO CORNEA!!!

And the craziest part?!? He is STILL convinced that there is a contact lens in there and that we just weren't looking hard enough, and he slides the slit lamp back towards the doctor and sticks his nail into his eye AGAIN in the chair!!!

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?

Now, as anyone here who has had even the teenist bit of something in their eye knows, it stings like a mofo, right?

So how in the fuck was this guy NOT screaming in agony?

Drugs. Lots and lots and lots and LOTS of drugs.

He admitted that he "self medicates" and will take anything he can get his hands on, legal or illegal. *Anything*. Honestly, the guy swallows so many pills each day I'd be shocked if there were any room left for *food*.

As he left, he *still* claimed that he didn't feel any pain and that we were overreacting. OVERREACTING?!? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!? Your cornea is probably sitting next to your heroin spoon, for fucks sake!!! (Is heroin even the one with the spoon? I have no clue, I am so uncool...)

We did some research after he was gone and as it turns out, the previous doctors he had been to all refused to fit him for contact lenses in the first place because he's a bipolar schizo manic depressive whacked out crazy person (or something like that) who obviously couldn't handle the responsibility of caring for his lenses daily.

So, the genius decides to come to us for an exam and fitting, but is on his best behavior and conveniently "forgets" to tell us about his physical and mental problems. Since he told us all sorts of lies on his medical questionnaire, I don't think there's any way he can come back and blame us for all of this... at least, I hope.

Just thinking about it makes me want to gag again...

[JuniorMintz]

Again, not for those who got all pukey with Freaky Ass 1.0.

People are so yucky. Just... ugh...

1. Crazy chick who should DAMN WELL KNOW BETTER since she works in a hospital herself called sometime last year yelling at me because she thought she had an eye infection and somehow, it was my fault since I did her contact lens training.

Even though I made it very clear to her (and *everyone*) that hygiene is VERY important when handling lenses, I didn't *specifically* tell her that if her contact happens to come out and land on the floor that it is a bad idea to pick it up and stick it straight back into her eye with no rinsing of any sort.

And yes... this happened while she was at work. She picked up a lens off of a FILTHY HOSPITAL LOBBY FLOOR and put it in her body.

The kicker? This all happened about 9 or 10 months ago. She just recently showed up for an exam a couple of weeks ago but couldn't complete it because she had to be treated for some awful viral infection... *again*... apparently she takes her lenses out halfway through her shift, STICKS THEM IN HER MOUTH, and puts them back in again when they get dry. It's too inconvenient to buy, then use, eye-drops apparently.

2. Mr. No Cornea!!!!! returned the other day!

His mother called on his behalf, apparently he's having trouble convincing the DMV that he's ok to drive...

I think she "self medicates" too because she told me a long ass tale of woe that I only understood half of. I *did* catch the part where she mentioned his contacts and how he doesn't see very well out of them... (this is where I heard the squeaky/scratchy sound of a record being stopped in my head)

CONTACTS?!?


WTF?!?

I was pretty sure we put an end to that nonsense the last time he was in considering he DOESN'T HAVE A DAMN CORNEA TO STICK ONE TO!

GAG!

So... I convince him to come in the next day. Too bad I was at our other location that day because I heard it was a doozy of a visit.

Still self medicates. Still thinks we worry too much. Still dirty as all hell.

Oh, and he buys his contacts from the FLEA MARKET now since they don't care too much about pesky details like "valid Rx's" and whatnot.

And the thing about flea market contacts?!? Most of them have been expired for years and were found in dumpsters behind optometry clinics. Every few months when it's time to clean house, it's my job to actually puncture and destroy our stuff so that it doesn't end up being "dispensed" by Dr. Dumpster Diver.

And still... he has no cornea. I genuinely don't know what we're going to do with this man.