Glass Eye

I almost lost an eye this morning.

Well, maybe not lost. But I did barely escape spending my first day back to work from the holiday break in the hospital having a piece of glass dug out of my eye.

Let me set the scene. Every morning before I hit the showers, I drink some water and empty the dishwasher. I hate having to do that chore after I get home in the afternoon, and would rather get it over with while I'm getting awake.

This morning, I had to put a wine glass away in an overhead cabinet. I had the cabinet door open, and when I reached up with the glass, it caught the corner of the cabinet door and broke just a few inches away from my face. It wasn't too big a mess, so I didn't think about it too much. I just swept up the shards, quietly cussing. It was a craptacular way to start my day.

Minutes later as I was brushing my teeth, I noticed a speck on my glasses. Arrgh. I HATE it when my lenses are dirty. I took them off to see what it was, and realized that the speck was a shard of glass that had imbedded into my right lens. Yes. Imbedded. I couldn't pick it out or scrape it off; the force of the break had driven it right in there. The glass must have shattered with more force than I thought, and since I was looking up, it blew out just a couple of inches from my eyes. Wow.

The thought of what would have happened had I already had my contacts in or if I had just not put my glasses on before I unloaded the dishwasher has me shaking in my shoes a little. Sometimes I do that; I stumble around half-blind if my glasses aren't on my bedside table in the morning. I'm quite nearsighted, but I know my own kitchen well enough to wing it. But I wouldn't have seen the glass coming, and it was a sizeable speck. Enough to blind somone if it had gone into my cornea with the same force it went into my Featherweights lenses.

The good news is that I'm fine, and my guardian angel was watching out for me. The bad news is I need a new pair of glasses, and I need them pretty quickly. The shard is smack in the middle of the lens and makes everything blurry through that eye.

But I just keep coming back to the good news.