Corneal Abrasions - Should have worn my goggles!

I cannot catch a break.

Over the weekend I wanted to do some light yard work and decided to try out the new aerial tree saw we had purchased a few weeks ago.

Looking at the tree I knew where the branches would fall once cut so I didn't think safely googles were necessary.

The first few branches went well. I sawed, they fell, and all was right with the world. Then I went to saw off another branch and before I knew it I saw a projectile of wood heading straight for my eyeball! It was freaky like when you see a bullet heading towards someone in slow motion in a movie. Anyways it hit me right in the eye and it hurt!

A trip to the ER later that day showed I had an abrasion on my cornea. Great! The bright green spot is where the projectile scraped open my cornea. It didn't hurt as much as it stung and burned. It kind of felt like having a sore throat, in my eye. The ER doctor put a dye in my eye then looked at with a black light. The black light made the abraded area glow in the dark. Creepy cool.

The cure has beens simple so far. 4 times a day I have to put an antibiotic ointment in my eye. It's the equivalent to putting vaseline in your eye. Fun :D On the good news front the doctor told me that the cornea is the fastest healing tissue in your body so I should be just fine in no time at all.

Here are the branches I sawed off before the incident occurred.

Seriously though, I'm lucky it wasn't more serious. As it was it missed my retina and didn't actually puncture anything. I am sharing this with you as a cautionary tale to remind everyone to take every precaution when trimming your trees so that you don't end up in ER like I did!