As you may or may not be aware, your friendly optometrist is not only your first port of call for any vision problems but also for any eye emergencies. Your hard worked GP does not deal with eye problems anymore, the Scottish Government would like everything to do with eyes to come to optometrists. In Grampian, we go a step further as we now act effectively as the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary eye casualty department.
We get to see simple conjunctivitis to sight threatening eye diseases and all points in between. Mostly we get to pick lumps of metal out of (generally) men’s eyes. Here in lies my tale….
An unfortunate incident with a rusty car exhaust resulted in a poor chap coming to see me with a tightly screwed up, painful eye. He had not been wearing any eye protection when removing an old exhaust and a piece of metal had become embedded in his cornea. For the uninitiated this is very painful! He was accompanied by his four year old son. He had been in this position before so he knew what was coming.
“I know this involves needles, I hate needles. Do it and don’t let me see anything” he said. He sat in the test chair, his son sat in the other chair in the room. I put anesthetic drops in his eye and waited for the numbness to take effect. Note: to remove metal in the eye we use a hypodermic needle. Not to poke in and gouge but to use the cup shaped end to effectively spoon out the fragment. Well, I pulled the needle out of its casing, all 2 inches!!! He had his eyes squeezed shut so as not to see…and…the wee boy screamed out “WAOOOOOOOOOOW look at the size of that!”
The Dad’s face went chalky white and he threatened to throw up. The kid was suitably ashamed of his big girls blouse of a Dad.
Moral of the story: Big soft boys should leave wee strong boys at home. Or alternatively, wear your flipping safety specs! You choose.