Oh, my eyes!

Yes, I have had surgery on my eyelid, again. This makes the fourth time I've gone under the knife for two different styes. And this time the doc had to cut out part of the eyelid, though he said he left the eyelashes along. Please let him be telling the truth.

This is the first time I've ever had stitches, though. First time ever. Yep, in 28 years I've never had to be sewn up.

Don't get me wrong. I've had numerous bizarre accidents and injuries, but I've technically* never broken a bone or gotten stitches. If you don't believe me about the strange nature of my injuries, let me share a few choice examples with you:

1…. Eight years ago I took a study abroad trip over to London for 2 months, and I was so worried that I would hurt myself while far away from my family. (I tend to be somewhat of a hypochondriac, though generally won't admit it.) The gods were smiling on me during those months, but the moment I got back, they decided to have a little fun with me. A week after my trip, the same day I met my new roommates for the summer, we decided to have a friendly game of basketball in the swimming pool with some guys we all knew. Well, things got a little out of hand. Since I'm so small (5'1" to be exact) the guys would pick me up and throw me across the pool to get me out of the game. Things were raucous but harmless, that is until my roommate went up for a rebound and brought her elbow down . . . on my nose. It broke cleanly and left my nose completely crooked. There wasn't any blood, but boy did that sucker hurt. But as I always do when injured, I started laughing hysterically over how stupid I was to get hurt in such a bizarre way. They all thought I was faking it, until they saw my nose, that is. I had surgery a week later to fix it, but for several months afterward it hurt to blow my nose or even breathe. The reason it didn't bleed was because it broke right where the cartilage and the bone meet. The doctor said he'd never seen anyone with a break like that before.


2…. Well, a week after my broken nose, I was driving home from an appointment with the ENT (nose doctor) just before he was going to operate on it (it was such an odd break he decided he should knock me out since he might have had to cut it open to fix it). Just as I was headed down the street toward home, a car pulled out in front of me and I barreled into it. That's what I think what happened because I can't remember the 30 seconds before the accident happened. All I can remember was the airbag exploding into my face, smashing into my already broken nose. (This was before it got fixed, or otherwise I would have been one angry woman.) My dad's car, which I was driving at the time, was completely totaled even though I had only been driving 30 mph. At least it wasn't on the freeway where a head-on accident like that would have killed me. After that week, some of my friends were ready to stick me in a padded room to keep me from injuring myself even more.


3…. Continuing in the vein of broken bones, I was in a college apartment one night walking toward my bed when I smashed my middle toe in the cinder block holding up my roommate's bed. (Remember using cinder blocks to prop up the bed so more stuff could be stashed beneath? Great for storage, bad for toes.) I nearly cried it was so painful. Actually, I think my eyes did tear up. That little piggy hurt for weeks afterward, and I walked funny for a while until it stopped throbbing so much.


4…. Okay, one more broken bone story and then I'll move on to something else. When I was 10, my siblings and I were playing roller hockey out in the driveway. (Mighty Ducks was popular then, and roller hockey was all the rage in my neighborhood.) Sad to say, wheels on my feet plus my ability to injure myself are not a good combination. While standing still, my feet somehow flew out from under me and I landed, flat on my tush, on the hard cement driveway. Again, I laughed hysterically while my family looked at me like I was some strange child. All I can remember after that is how painful it was to lie in bed. For two whole weeks it was incredibly painful even to lie down, let alone sit. I still can't do sit ups to this day, and I'm sure my butt bone (tail bone, whatever) is crooked.

5…. Later on at the end of my childhood as I was trying so hard to become a woman, I decided that I needed to shave my legs. I didn't ask my mom because I was certain she would tell me no, so I went into the bathroom when no one else was around and proceeded to shave my legs. No one had ever told me that you need to use soap or shaving cream. A few minutes later, with large strips of skin shaved off, my mom came into the bathroom and saw my bleeding legs. She gently showed me the proper way to shave, after cleaning me up of course, and didn't care that I wanted to learn even though I was only 11 or 12 at the time. Now, I can't remember why I ever wanted to start shaving since it has become the bane of my morning showers.


6…. I have very tender skin, and even the slightest bump on an arm or leg will turn into a bruise, so sometimes while I'm getting into the shower I look down and see mysterious bruises that magically appear overnight. Most of the time I can't even remember how I got them.

7…. Many of those mysterious bruises probably come from my lack of coordination, or should I say my poor depth perception. I run into things all the time, especially when I'm groggy in the morning. After I've just woken up, I'm usually pretty wobbly and run into the walls, tables, chairs, whatever happens to be nearby. I also tend to smack my hip into tables and desks while walking past because I misjudge how far I am from the offending items. People at work find it rather funny when I yell because I've run into something.

8…. Several years ago I served as a church missionary in Montreal for a year and a half. The day before I left, I got a stye on my lower eyelid, but I was so preoccupied with moving and such that I didn't do much for it. Well, that sucker stayed on my eyelid, sometimes swelling up, sometimes subsiding, for the entire year and a half. Getting to the doctor in Canada was a pain, so I never thought it important enough to have one look at my eye. By the time I got home a year and a half, it was sore and rock hard. I went to the doctor and the pus was so hard he had to perform surgery on it twice to finally get rid of it.

9…. And I'll end with one of the funniest. When I was born, the soft spot on top of my head never really got hard. After two years, my parents took me to the doctor, who thought he would have to put a metal plate in my head to protect my poor little brain. After what my family attributes to a miracle, it finally did harden two weeks before I was to go in for surgery. So, thankfully, I do not set off metal detectors everywhere I go. But it would have been really great for head-butting people. Um, never mind.

*The nose, toe, and tailbone aren't normal bones you consider when speaking of broken bones. Never broken an arm or leg, though I always wanted a cast when I was a kid so people could sign it. I thought it a sign of coolness. (I really shouldn't say that because I've probably cursed myself now.)