Asking for Prayer

It has been raining here almost nonstop, so when I saw that yesterday was predicted to be a dry, sunny day, I decided to spend a few hours outside doing the much neglected job of weeding & trimming around the trees & bushes.  I was out there for about 6 hours & got about half the trees & bushes done.  Things were going well, & then it happened.

Remember last November when I bent down to pull some weeds away from a myrtle bush after mistakenly cutting off two good branches & permanently disfiguring our little pine tree?

I did not see a little branch tip sticking out from the myrtle.  I bent down & it poked me in my right eye. I felt immediate pain & literally saw stars.  I called my eye doctor's office ... they said to come right in.  I was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion in my right eye (the second in that eye ... I had one the prior year due to a similar injury) & was told how serious this was (apparently branch tips in Kentucky have some kind of fungus on them which is not a good thing to stick in your eye).  He squirted a bunch of medicinal goop in my eye, patched it, & then after the patch came off I had to apply two different kinds of eye drops in my eye for a week or so.  My eye doctor is a joker most of the time (I like that) & he told me that I should give up yard work before I blinded myself.  

Yesterday I was nearing the end of my trimming & weeding.  I would have stopped with the back yard, but there was a grass that badly needed trimmed & weeded near the driveway.  I decided that would be the last of my work for the day. Near that grass were 2 bushes & I decided I would trim & weed those too.  

The first bush I came to was a wedding bush. Here's a nice one (not mine) in full bloom.

You may be able to tell from the photo that it has very long, very thin branches.  I was being careful ... as I had been with all my weeding & trimming ... that there were no wayward branches that would poke my eye, but one of them got past me. I bent over, & wham!  Poke.  I didn't see stars this time, but I felt pain.  I had a bottle of water with me & I immediately flushed my eye with the water, but it didn't seem to help much.  I continued my weeding & trimming (I had to get it done!!!), flushing my eye with water every now & then, & then went into the house to take a shower.  

I looked at my eye.  The poke caused bleeding.  I took my shower, then called my eye doctor's office.  I couldn't believe that they had no emergency backup on weekends!  All the message said was that if there was some kind of emergency, call the hospital.  I called.  The operator didn't seem to know what to do.  She put me through to the ER.  First the person who answered the phone asked me if I wanted him to page my eye doctor, then he started telling me how they have no eye doctors on call at the hospital.  I told him to go ahead & page my eye doctor, & then he told me he couldn't do that!!!  I don't think he knew what he was doing.  He told me I could come into the ER & see an ER physician.  I decided to do that.  

The ER physician confirmed that I have a corneal abrasion.  She also said there is a piece of something embedded in my eye.  She gave me a bottle of ciprofloxacin drops, told me to use those every 2 hours when I'm awake & to take Tylenol for the pain, & said to call my eye doctor first thing Monday morning.

My eye is hurting this morning & I can tell there is something in it.  John looked at it & said the blood is gone but there is a "big black piece of something" there   : (

Your prayers are greatly appreciated.