I have almost a phobia of the eye. There is a reason. As a young child during one summer family reunion picnic I had a small bug zoom into my eye and embed into the white of my eye. Also throughout my life I have had bugs make a bee line straight to my eyes. I think it is because of the color of my eyes, frankly. My eye colors range from a sky blue to green and then can change to a deep gray. Depending on what I’m wearing and the mood I’m in on any particular day.
When the bug embedded in my eye I wouldn’t let the doctor come near me with this claw like apparatus and open my eye, go figure. They decided it would be best if they actually put me down, as in surgery, to get the bug out of my eye. So now I have a small scare on that eye that occurred when they pulled the bug out of my eye. And a phobia of eyes ever since.
Fast forward a few years and I’m a nurse at a hospital getting a report at the beginning of my shift on a patient. The leaving nurse is telling me that the patient has had surgery and developed Compartment Syndrome in his left eye and that eye drops need to be administered every hour on the hour. So I accept the patient with a couple of other patients and start to get organized for my shift. I do ask about what time I need to give the next dose of eye drops. I go into this patients room with eye drops in hand. He has a patch over his left eye and I introduce myself and tell him what I’m going to do. I remove the patch and I almost pass out.
It is grotesque to say the least. Almost like it should have been in some horror movie. The eye is bulging from the socket. The whites are bulging from the color, and the color is sunken in slightly. It’s twice the size it should be and this all red from blood vessels bursting. Almost hanging from the socket because of the swelling. The patient has not actually seen it in person or looked in a mirror, but the look on my face I’m sure told him enough. I was speechless, if you can believe that, and hurried through the administration of the eye drops and rushed out the room. Now I have to go back every hour. How did I do it? Im not sure, but I did.
I sucked up my courage and went back every hour. I didn’t say a whole lot giving the drops and rushed out, but I did it. The next day I requested not to be his nurse. I didn’t think I was the right person for that patient. I mean what if he had asked me how it was looking? Me being bluntly honest I would have told him, which couldn’t of been a good thing. I’m just glad he didn’t ask. I learned that I would never work in an ophthalmologist office, EVER, that day.
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How could you have ever put those drops in?? I admire that so much, I would have run and not come back. I was planning to be an ophthalmologist like my cousin and worked in his office during hs and college before premed and would help him doing office surgeries. Eventually I could see that med wasn’t for me, or being an RN like my mom. Eyes are weird tho.
I think I had my eyes closed really it was horrific.
You’re an angel to provide that level of care.
I’m sure that I could of done better, it made my anxiety go up.
Omg. That sounds horrifying, for you as a child and the adult thing..
Your eye story with the bug sounds horrifying and such a freak incident! Incredible.
I googled OCS and see what you mean that’s gruesome. Apparently it requires urgent treatment though so hopefully they got seen by a specialist!
They did I believe