I have been fortunate enough in my life, despite being exceedingly clumsy, to avoid major injuries to myself or others during moments of non-coordination. There has been several close calls, but I have made it through the past 22 (almost 23!) years relatively unscathed.
Just about every injury that I have sustained truthfully couldn't be avoided. Like the time I tore the ACL in my left knee after stepping in a pothole while marching off the field during a marching band competition. Or the time I sprained my right wrist when lifting a 36" television off of a chest-high shelf. Or the time my finger got caught in the crashbar of a door while holding it open for someone, nearly ripping it clean out of its socket. All of these things just happened, and there was nothing I could do to avoid them. There is really only one event that could have been avoided, and I blame the fact that it did happen purely on user error. Unfortunately, the results of this event have remained permanent, and is the sole reason why I now wear glasses.
It was the tail end of summer back in 2002. I was at my grandparents house, cleaning their large in-ground pool. It had been a dry summer, and the water level in the pool was very low. Their only water source was a well that had a tendency to dry up, so they didn't want to fill it, and cleaning the pool had been very difficult. On this particular day, the chemical and PH levels were completely off balance, and needed to be fixed.
After brushing and vacuuming the pool and putting all the hoses and poles away, I grabbed the assortment of chemicals needed to restore the proper balance in the pool water. I made a few trips from the storage closet to the pump house, carrying a bottle of Algaecide, chlorine tablets, and granulated chlorine. Due to the water being so low, I couldn't put the chemicals in the skimmer basket, as was the normal practice. I shut off the pump, and unscrewed the lid to the main pump filter.
As the water drained out from the pump, I dropped in two chlorine tablets. Next came a bag of granulated (and highly concentrated "shock") chlorine. I took my sunglasses off, and began to pour the algaecide. Before I knew what was happening, one of the chlorine tablets exploded, causing a cloud of toxic dust and liquid to rise up into my face as I stood over the pump filter. My eyes began to sting, and I felt a surge of pain as the chemicals began to burn the skin on my face. I dropped the bottle of algaecide and stumbled back, protecting my eyes with my hands. The second chlorine tablet ruptured, sending up another burst of chemicals into the air. I got on my knees and tried rubbing the chemicals out of my eyes, and soon found I could barely see.
So there I was, outside by myself, almost blind and grabbing at my eyes, crawling on my hands and knees, inches away from the edge of the pool. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Luckily, my grandmother had heard the explosions and looked out the window to see what had happened. She saw me crawling towards the house, and rushed outside to help me. I explained what had happened, and for a half hour we tried rinsing my eyes out with water. I even took a shower, but the burning in my eyes wouldn't stop.
I eventually ended up in the waiting room of a local optometrist. Despite explaining to them the urgency of the situation, I sat in the waiting room for over thirty minutes holding a wet rag over my eyes. I was able to see a little bit, but there was a lot of grey/black fuzziness around the edges. After mentioning that I was slowly losing my vision, they pulled me into an exam room.
Diagnosis? Scratched corneas.
They finished rinsing out the chemicals, gave me some medicated eye drops, and told me I would be fine in a couple of days. One month later, I was wearing glasses. Gone forever was my perfect 20/20 vision. Every year since then my vision has gotten worse, and I have resigned to the fact that I am destined to wear glasses for the rest of my life. Due to my experience, I won't consider wearing contacts because I have a fear of putting things in my eyes.
From what I've been able to find out, the reason why the chemicals reacted the way they did was due to the absence of water. I theorize that the water dilutes the chemicals just enough so they don't react as they do without water. I haven't tested my theory, and I have no desire to. It was plain stupidity and lack of foresight that lead to the incident, and I have no one to blame but myself.
The only comfort that I can find about this is knowing that there has got to be others out there that have caused themselves pain and suffering due to a moment of mental obscurity. Anyone care to share?
P.S. This is my 100th post. Exciting!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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We kept a babygate at the top of the stairs when our kids were smaller. Rather than open it, out of laziness, I'd step over and continue down the stairs. Once I did this and slipped. Fractured vertebrae. 6 weeks flat on my back. Much pain. It was horrible and I had no one to blame but myself.
I once shocked the holy living shit out of myself while unplugging a hair dryer with wet hands. From that day forward my hands have been trembly. People always think that I am nervous and usually make me feel like a dumb shit about it. It's nice. I love it. It's sort of like asking a stroke victim why they keep talking that way. Real tactful.
I've made mistakes (human!) and had fortunate escapes - never any debilitating consequences...apart from getting pregnant, which led to an emergency Cesarean, which led to..I guess not:D
Sorry to hear about the eyes though - tough call. Chemicals very tricky - when using them for hairdressing I treated them with utmost respect. Should you have been handling them without proper training at 16-17?
That must have been a horrible experience. And I know that blaming oneself is sometimes worse that the actual pain. (I do that all the time!)
No major physical damage here, but lots of small, other types of consequences!
Well, beyond letting myself get pregnant, which we know what that leads to, I'd say tearing up my knee in a moonwalk full of uncoordinated musicians was the next one on my list of horrible pain I've caused myself. I couldn't walk for three weeks.
Congrats on your 100th post!!!
I share the same feeling about wearing contacts. I will forever wear glasses.
I'm sorry about what happened to your eyes. But look at it this way, what kind of geek would you be without glasses?
Oh and did you mention you were in marching band? You are so The Badass Geek!
My bowling ball incident was one of those mistakes, I guess. Me and a friend tried throwing 2 bowling balls down the lane at once. He was too close to me so we bumped balls. My finger was in the middle.
I was impatiently opening a box that had arrived from UPS. It was very well and tightly wrapped with the clear,slick tape that lies flat and is almost impossible to peel up.
I picked up a pair of scissors to help do the job and ran them along the center seam.
Which they only skimmed across.
The scissors ended up firmly & deeply implanted in my other forearm, which I stood stupidly gazing at for long moments, because it looked so out of the ordinary that I couldn't believe my eyes. It didn't even hurt, beyond feeling like I had been punched.
The clean-up and repair at the hospital hurt far more.
No,actually, the questions about how it happened hurt the most. :)
I got a million of these stories. This was just the most recent. :)
KT: OUCH. Just.... OUCH.
Sus: So basically, your career as a world-famous neurosurgeon was dashed upon the rocks. Don't you hate it when life throws you a curveball?
Scatterbrain: I had been trained on proper handling techniques with the chemicals, but it didn't occur to me that the absence of water would make a difference.
FIS: Sometimes, those small injuries can build up to a world of problems. Again, I speak from personal experience.
Lola: That does sound painful. Didn't the thoughts of "dancing" and "musicians" give you a warning though?
Employee No 3699: Thanks! Not only was I in marching band, I was the Drum Major my senior year. Oh, yeah.
Meg: Bumping balls with another guy is always dangerous.
Kim: Holy SHIT. That takes the cake, right there.
Oh, yes. I am queen of doing stupid-ass crap. Where do I begin? I have caused horrible damage to my foot by stepping on a baby gate. That was several months ago and I'm still in terrible pain.
Aunt Becky: Baby gates seem to be dangerous things. I'm making a mental note to avoid them.
One time I was using a utility knife to cut some cardboard into pieces. My dad was sitting next to me and he even said, you are going to cut yourself with that damn thing if you don't watch it! And a split second later, I sliced right down to the bone on the side of my left thumb, cut a nerve even.
I can't wear contacts either. I tried off and on for years, and every time the eye doctor says, oh but they've made such advances, they are thinner than ever, you'll never even feel them, I am convinced to get a trial pair and guess what? I CAN feel them. Period. I am considering eye surgery. My brother had it done last summer and he is really happy with it.
I am naturally clumsy by nature, but I've got no major injuries (yet) to show for it.
When I was 8, though, my mom was making candles for Christmas. She had melted wax in cans and was putting a taper candle in the middle. She was leaning over doing this and the hot wax spurted up and into her eyes. They 'froze' shut with the wax. I remember her screaming and then calmly telling me to dial the number for the police. She had no permanent damage, but had to spend hours in the hospital while they peeled the wax of her eyeballs.
Something I'll never forget.
Oh and congrats on the 100th post!
While the only thing I can think of relative to your experience is something very painful happening during sex (no, not going into details here, perhaps someday in my blog), I wanted to mention at the time of this post it had been almost exactly one year from my PRK surgery. The only reason I bring this up is that from what I gather, PRK (not Lasik, which is a different procedure), *could* potentially cure this problem. I'm no ophthalmologist, but it would seem to me dissolving part of the outer layer of the cornea and having it regrow could be a good option to get rid of the scratches, and at the very least, the laser could correct the rest of your cornea to compensate for them.
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