Eye-yi-yi!!!

Tuesday was a warm day ... sunny & dry. Temperatures after Tuesday were predicted to drop like a rock &, God willing, remain that way until spring.  I therefore decided it would be the perfect day to cut down the daylilies & irises & to put the Christmas lights on the little pine tree we bought a couple years ago to plant in the front yard.  I ran into a little problem while stringing the lights.  There were some dead branches on the bottom of the tree.  Not limbs, mind you. Branches. It was only after I put the lights on the tree that I thought I should trim these branches.  I walked back to the garage, took hold of the big pruner, & returned to the tree.  I knelt down & trimmed a few small dead pieces away from the trunk directly in front of me.  Then I don't know where my mind was, but seeing the dead branches to the right of me, I placed the pruner against the trunk of the tree & cut first the upper & then the lower "branch" & was heartsick as I saw the entire bottom right side of the tree collapse to the ground along with the lights that had been strung there.  I hadn't cut the branches ... I had cut the limbs!!!  Our cute little pine tree now looks as you it see in the photo below ... lol!  I can laugh about it now.  A permanent memorial to my stupidity!  

After composing myself ... & imagining John's horror over this when he returned home (he was out doing a bit of Christmas shopping) ... I carried the pieces I had cut from the tree back to where we put such things.  As I was was walking to this place where we put garden debris, I noticed how ratty it looked underneath our large myrtle bush, & so I decided to stop a moment & pull away this ratty growth.  So there I was, on my knees, making my way around the bush, bending closer to pull away this ratty growth, & suddenly a small branch which I did not see ... which was sticking up toward me ... met my eye.  I saw stars.  I blinked & blinked & blinked, then ... yes ... finished pulling away the remainder of the ratty growth, then disposed of it along with the cuttings from the tree.  I then headed into the house where I profusely rinsed my eye with eye drops, then showered & let the water rinse the eye further.  It felt like there was a little something in the eye, & I wasn't seeing very clearly with that eye, & what I was seeing kind of had a little aura around it.  I decided that if things weren't better in the morning, I'd call the eye doctor.  

When I woke up yesterday morning, the eye seemed to be okay at first, then started bothering me again.  I called the eye doctor's office & was told to come in at 10 o'clock.  It turns out that the point of that little branch had poked my cornea & then scraped upward a bit.  This is apparently a bad thing.  Not as bad as a fingernail poking you in the eye, but with what happened to me, there is a real concern for fungus.  Apparently fungus causes major problems with infections.  The debris & whatever else that was on the point of that branch takes a back seat to the fungus possibility.  My eye was slathered with antibiotic ointment & then a nurse put a huge patch on it to keep it shut for 24 hours.  I am seeing the doctor again this morning so he can take a look at the eye again.  I may have to be repatched for a couple days ... something I pray will NOT happen because this patch hurts!  After the patch is no longer necessary, I will then have to bathe my eye in antibiotic eye drops for a week or so.  I was useless yesterday as I couldn't read, couldn't knit, couldn't do anything because it caused pain.  This morning I'm a bit better.  I have my glasses spread open across the patch & I'm writing this post using only my "good" eye ... lol!

Incidentally, John took the tree damage amazingly well.  He said it doesn't look bad at all & that he could think of worst things that could have happened.  God bless him   : )