Alarming Health Update: Read the Bottle!

So last night I bought the wrong kind of contact solution (contact cleaner, apparently), the main ingredient of which is hydrogen peroxide, soaked my right contact in the stuff, and loaded it right into my eye.  Not a good idea.  As soon as I realized, "Hey, I think this acid burn is abnormal," I rinsed thoroughly with cold water and observed large red vessels snaking their way up to my iris, pulsing in time to my heartbeat.  And I thought, "Crap."

So, because I didn't have any sterile saline solution (the reason for my purchasing this stuff), I went about boiling some water, adding some salt, and throwing in an ice cube or two.  then I loaded my eye in a bowl of the stuff and let it sit for a bit.  This did absolutely nothing for the pain or discomfort I was feeling, and when I looked into the mirror a second time, I now saw the white of my eye swollen so bad it looked like my iris was misshapen.  For a moment I thought a contact was floating around in there, so I touched it and realized that was the front layer of my eye.  Bad mistake.  And I thought, "Crap."

So I took my boiling gnocchi off the stove, threw some cold tomato sauce on it, and ran down the stairs to catch a cab.  The ride to the hospital was a bit hairy--the cab driver nearly hit a bus and the then pulled up next to him and had a shouting match, which basically consisted of the words "I'm reporting you," from both sides, and four-letter words strewn throughout.  Finally, we made it to the emergency room.  I stepped up to the counter, gave the guy my name, explained that my eye was falling out, and sat down.  I held everything in place while watching "The Lost World" on the overhead TV for about thirty minutes.  Which cheered me up a bit.  No matter what was going to happen to my eye, it didn't hold a candle to being pushed off a cliff in a bus by two angry T-rex.

Putting things in perspective

To anyone who's still thinking, "Crap"--don't worry.  My eye was washed with some sort of secret fluid from an IV for 10 minutes, numbed, dyed to test pH, tested for vision impairment, and given a dose of antibiotics which I am still applying every three hours.  The ointment is this jelly stuff that makes my eyelids stick together.  Anyway, my pH is normal, my vision is the same as it was before the accident (though a little blurry sometimes from watering so much) and the weird misshapen iris thing is only due to swelling, not erosion of my cornea, as I was expecting (Dr. Luehrman over here).  They say it'll get better in a couple days, but to check with an eye specialist if I have any problems.  In the meantime, I look a bit like that guy from district nine.  Which is a plus.  I guess.

You be the judge

Morals of the story: Read the damn bottle.  I'm an idiot.  And furthermore, you don't have to be registered with a doctor here to receive free hospital care and medication.  They told me I was "all set" multiple times before I left, without even getting a health insurance number or payment of any kind.  Now that's a plus I've gotta give to Scotland.