During one of the largest home improvement undertakings I have ever been involved in I suffered an eye injury.
After cutting a small corner of plywood from part of my roof decking I held onto the piece in my hand and proceeded to remove my safety googles from my face. In the process I jabbed the corner of the plywood directly into my eye. The pain was excruciating and I immediately dropped to the roof in agony for a few minutes. Although my eye was extremely bloodshot I felt that it would heal and I had been fortunate that I hadn’t punctured my eyeball itself. After a few days the redness went away and I didn’t give the injury any more thought.
Approximately a month later I woke up in the early morning with severe eye pain. It felt as though I had a large piece of sand or some other foreign body stuck in my eye. I proceeded to flush my eye with water, which actually made the pain worse and I viewed my eye in the mirror in search of a foreign body. I found nothing yet every time I blinked my eye pain was intense. My eye watered immensely which in turn cause my nose to run and gradually became increasingly red and again very painful. I tried to drive to work but the intense watering, pain and now sensitivity to light made this impossible. I turned around and asked that my loving wife place a call to the doctor and set up an appointment.
At the doctor’s office I was seen very quickly and after turning off the light and examining my eye my doctor stated I had an corneal ulcer and needed to see an eye doctor asap! He stated this could be damaging to my sight and could be viral in nature. So he immediately had his nurse contact an Eye doctor and got me and my better half on our way. We were seen at the Eye doctor very quickly which was to my relief because the nurse administered a drop that took away the pain almost immediately. I gave the doctor the history including the above mentioned incident with the plywood and he made the diagnosis of Recurrent Corneal Erosion Syndrone.
The Doctor gave a great explanation of just exactly what this meant. He explained that the eyeball particularly the cornea can best be explained like a sandwich. Yes a sandwich with two pieces of bread, mayo on both pieces of bread and lets say ham in the middle or roast beef or whatever you prefer. He said that with an abrasion to the corneal area you end up removing a small piece of the bread and the mayo in that small area. Then what happens with recurrent corneal erosion is that our wonderfully made body repairs the damage. However the layer thats repaired is not as strong as the original and can actually be wiped off the wound either by rubbing of the eye or it just sticking to the eyelid! Needless to say when this recurrent erosion takes place its extremely painful. Every blink of the eye feels as though a grain a sand is being gouged into the eye. With my injury the Doctor has chosen to have me use a special drops and a eye ointment called Muro 128. At first I was taken back by the cost of this product, but it has been a real help with keeping the corneal abrasion pretty much in check.