Mark and I looked into his eye and I honestly felt like I was mistaken in what I was looking at. Surely there was a strange shadow or something that made his eye look the way it did. It reminded me of the way Jell-O might look if someone took a spoon and scooped out a section right on the surface. It literally looked like a little chunk was missing right up the middle of his pupil and iris.
Mark took him up to the emergency room. Joel was already in quite a lot of pain at that point and completely wigged out when the doctor wanted to put eye drops in. Mark and a male nurse had to hold Joel while the doctor did the drops. He sent him home with some antibiotic eye drops and Tylenol with Codeine.
Joel woke up in the middle of the night screaming and crying. He was in so much pain. He kept saying his lungs hurt, but it really was his stomach. I listened to his chest and although his heart rate was really fast I could tell his lungs were clear. It was his stomach that was gurgling. We were really close to taking him back to the ER. Finally he calmed down and fell asleep.
The next morning he woke up and just seemed absolutely exhausted. I took him to an opthamalogist per the ER doc's instructions. When the doctor looked in Joel's eye he asked, "Was he able to sleep at all last night?" I explained that he woke up several times and was just writhing in pain at one point. The doctor asked if he vomited at all. I told him no, but explained how his stomach seemed to hurt. The doctor said that basically every time he blinked he was in excruciating pain. The section that was damaged was just an extremely sensitive area full or nerve endings.
He put some dye in his eye so I could see how big the tear was. Yikes. It was the wildest thing I've ever seen! There was a whole section going right up his pupil that was lit up from the dye. The doctor said it was a really bad injury, but it would heal in a few days.
The doctor put some goop in Joel's eye which reminded me of petroleum jelly. Then he covered it with a pressure patch. He said Joel would remain uncomfortable, but it would heal. We went back to our friends' house and Joel basically laid down and slept most of the day. Any time he got up he put his hand to his eye and applied pressure to help with the throbbing he was feeling.
The next day Mark took Joel back to the eye doctor for him to remove the patch and check the progress. The tear was no longer visible! It was just an absolute miracle! I cannot believe how quickly it healed. Isn't God's design for our bodies amazing?! Joel's eye was still red and closed up more than the other, but the huge gash was all better.
His eye remained a little irritated for another 7 or 8 days, but seems to be completely back to normal now.
1 comment:
And when did he get big enough to have a missing tooth??
This would have freaked me out Sandy. Seriously, I don't konw if I could handle a Joel. Man, that boy has been thru the ringer!
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