Pauline's Happenings

At 1:15pm on Monday February 24, 2014 I was loading a pile of brush onto the flatbed truck to dispose of to a burn pit when I managed to get whacked in the right eyeball with a branch while, the irony, I was pushing it from hanging outside of the truck bed so I wouldn’t walk into it and get hurt.

*sigh

It hurt. BAD!

I called Pauline to bring me some water thinking I still had some material in my eye, once she arrived I flushed out my eye but it still hurt like hell. I finished the pile, dumped the load and went to the office to report it.

I hardly slept at all Monday night and Tuesday morning when I crawled out of bed I knew I needed to see a Dr but of course the closest Dr was on vacation so Pauline had to drive us to the Port Townsend urgent care center where we arrived around 10am.

The Nurse prepping me for the Dr, gave me two drops in the eye to ease the pain and THAT helped so much.  Those two drops brought me such huge relief. It felt like I had a stick in my eye. Both of my eyes was constantly tearing up, so it looked like I was crying, and that lasted for about 48 hours which also wrecked my sinus’s so I had sever watering eyes and nasal drip, it was a miserable way to spend 2 days/nights.

The Dr started to examine my eyes and he started off with a “WOW!”… That is NOT a good way to start an examination…

I had about 2-3 seconds of panic thinking I really screwed up my eye. He then said he was not even going to bother using the eye dye they use to help see scratches on the eye since mine were so easy to see.

I had abrasions at the 11:00, 5:30, and 6:00 positions, but would make a full recovery.

Whew! (I think Dr’s should start off with that instead of “wow”.) The eye cells regenerate every 9-12 hours, so as deep as my abrasions were, I would heal within a few days. He gave me a prescription for eyedrops, which I take every 3 hours and for another 24 hours after I no longer feel the pain.

The numbing eye drops the nurse gave me started to wear off around 2pm so from Monday to late Wednesday afternoon I would have a constant pain of 2/3 with a peak of 8 a few times every hour. Totally miserable. So pretty much for 2 days I laid in bed with all the shades down, lights out, while wearing sun glasses which I wore for 48+ hours inside and out, day and night.

Today is the first time I am not wearing sun glasses. I still have blurry eyesight in my right eye and since my left eye is doing most of the work now, I have had really tired eyes this week. I have my Mac screen display set at the lowest level of light and I have not been able to watch tv or anything else without pain, so we have been listening to music all week.

I can’t even read without pain or wearing my eyes out to the point, I just have to close them.

Monday was a rainy cloudy dark day, Tuesday and Wednesday were the kind of days you dream about having here in the Northwest. Just absolutely perfect. Sunny, clear, great lighting, not too harsh, not too soft, but perfect. With my eye issues I could just make out Mt Baker enough to know, I missed two epic days to take pictures.

Today, I am able to see better and it is once again cloudy.

*sigh.

The pain is almost all gone, I still have issues with bright light or when I try to focus on something far away or small text, but the Dr said I would make a full recovery, so I am just giving it more time.

I think I should be back to normal by this weekend, at least I am hoping I will be. My right eye is my photographic eye so I am worried about that…

On a much better note, this morning we received a email from the TNC Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve manager Matt Killeen, telling us that a Garter Snake I took a picture of at the TNC PSCP back on 09/10/2013 at 5:01pm was not just a Garter Snake, but a Mexican Garter Snake which is a very threatened species and my pictures are the first confirmed siting at the TNC PSCP since 1975!

He had it confirmed by the US Fish and Wildlife and was asking for more details I might have so I gave him all the facts and marked on the map where I took the pictures as well as offered him all 12 pictures I have of it.

The 2 pictures I posted can be found here:

Picture 1

Picture 2

He also said there was interest in my pictures of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo eating a lizard, so I offered him all 83 pictures I have of that.

We have also confirmed our entire Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring of 2015. While we will not be traveling as much as we would like, we will be in the areas we want to be in for so many reasons, so we consider this a big win for us.

We just need to think where we should head to in 2015. I think we should head to ID or WY or MT.

But we have time to think on that.

Laters…