October 22, 2003

A Squirt (or two) in the eye

Last night after my run with Felicia in our Half Marathon training, I walk in the door, and John announces that he had an accident. Earlier that day, I had discovered a leak beneath Courtney's bathroom vanity that appeared to have been there for quite a while. John took our X14 bottle, added Clorox bleach to fill the bottle, and attacked that nasty, slimy wall. The nozzle was one of those adjustable types and somehow he turned it so that, when he gave it several quick full blasts, and he didn't have time to react, the thing squirted backwards instead of forwards. He got two really good doses straight into his left eye. It was very, very irritated. I called the 800 number on the Clorox bottle. It was after 7:00 p.m., but they had another 800 number to call for medical emergencies. I called, a real live person answered, spent 5 - 10 minutes on the phone with me, told me to run tepid water on his forehead so that it would run and hit his eye. He was to blink so that the water would rinse his eye and we were to do this for 20 minutes. We got a towel and I had John lay on the kitchen counter and hang his head over the sink. I AM NOT A NURSE! After a few minutes, John said he had rinsed it enough before I got home and he just wanted to get up. After a while, John said his eye was feeling better. Then a short while later, the man I had spoken to from the Medical Emergency Line called back to see how John was doing. I was surprised and quite impressed that he called back.

Posted by Kathleen at 05:36 PM | Comments (5466)