21 Weeks: Pregnancy: Pirate Edition

9/4/12 - 21 Weeks Pregnant

A couple weeks ago, crazy pain in my right eye woke me up at 4 am. I tentatively pawed at that eye and found that my eye was swollen and bizarrely leaking tears, even with the eye clamped shut. Like I was sleep-sobbing. Out of one eye? Wait, it gets better. I stumbled to the bathroom and pried out my contacts and my eye didn’t look too bad. I mean, it was bright red, swollen and pathetic looking but there were no obvious giant glass shards embedded in my eye, which is what it felt like.

I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and fed Daisy early, who thought this was a neat game where her owner staggered around the house in the middle of the night with no depth perception. Eventually I was able to fall back asleep for a bit with the ice pack snuggled up against my eye and then had soothing dreams about my eye pain, including one in which I figured out that my eye hurt because I had somehow crammed three contact lenses into the one eye.

I really did try going to work but even when I could tentatively force my eye open for brief, glorious moments of sight, the pain stopped dropped me to my knees about every 30 seconds or so while I went, "ARRRRRRGH." Very much like movie supervillains do when their plans have been foiled yet again. Generally this behavior is frowned upon in a nurse so I came to terms that work was not going to happen.

To make matters more interesting, Joe was out of town, so I had to drive myself around to be treated later that morning. Luckily, there is an urgent care center about 30 seconds away from our house and I figured I could drive myself there without killing anyone. I suppose I could have walked there, too, but I didn’t really want to stumble along for 20 minutes while clutching my eye and moaning. People would assume a zombie apocalypse was starting, and then were would we be?

The doctor pretty quickly diagnosed me with a corneal ulcer, a nice big open sore on the eye caused by sleeping with my contacts in. Good work, Sophie. The doctor proceeded to casually mention that as a wartime doc in Korea, he saw a corneal ulcer much like mine become so infected with Pseudomonas that the lady’s eye melted within a matter of days. He paused. “We got her a glass eye,” he said thoughtfully, as if this were supposed to comfort me somehow. After this I was all I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT DOC, JUST DON’T LET MY EYE MELT. So I left with a prescription for some pain relieving eye drops, antibiotic eye drops, and a stylish eye patch. YES, PREGNANT WITH AN EYE PATCH. AND MY EYE IS PROBABLY GOING TO MELT. THIS DAY GETS BETTER AND BETTER.

Driving to and from the pharmacy while wearing an eye patch was probably one of the more sketchy things I have done but goddamnit, I was getting my anti-eye melting medications. Pedestrians be damned!

So I bummed around the house with my sweet eye patch on for the rest of the day. Eye injuries are especially lame because you can't go to work with a leaky useless eye but also can’t really do the usual sick-at-home things, like read or watch TV. I mean, I squinted in the general direction of the TV in order to “watch” What’s Eating Gilbert Grape but that’s about it. Luckily, as a pregnant lady, napping is a favorite activity of mine, so at least I was well rested.

Thankfully, eye injuries tend to heal pretty fast so the eye patch and mind-searing pain were short-lived. And, so far, my eye has not melted, so that’s awesome.

In other news, I am still pregnant. Baby Peapod moves enough that Joe can now feel him, and if I watch carefully when baby is active, I can see my belly pulsate. Very Alien-esque.

Ahem. I mean, the beautiful wonders of pregnancy, mother earth and so on. And so forth.