Just about a half-hour earlier than his normal wake-up time after his morning nap last Friday, Patrick started to scream. It wasn't the normal I-WANT-UP scream, but more like he had hurt himself. I made it upstairs to see him and he was fine; crying, but fine. As soon as I pulled him out of his bed, he stopped. No biggie, I thought. He's just getting smart about when I will respond quickly, right?
Nope. About a half hour after that, I noticed his eye was bloodshot. My first reaction? Spider disease, naturally. He was covered in spider bites, the thought of which I couldn't shake. He was ill from spiders. I made a mental note to keep an eye on it (as if I would ever have another option.) Just a few minutes later, Patrick looked up and pointed at something. Holy $#@&! His eye was black, at least the underside of it was. I started thinking his eyeball was detached, he wasn't getting any bloodflow to his eye, etc. I'm very rational and don't jump to conclusions, as you can see. This all makes sense. Bear with me.
I googled "black eyeball"...I got nothing. I googled "detached retina." Again, nothing. "Black eye"? Nothing but what you would expect. I called my dad. He told me to take a picture of it and send it to him. I got flustered and said I would take him to Medcheck. Is that a good thing to say to your physician father? In a word, no. His response was this (imagine a low, drawn out, talking-through-one's-teeth tone): "You are NOT taking him to Medcheck." It was the dad-voice I haven't heard since I moved out.
Five minutes later, I was in the car and headed to Butler University to see him. When we left our office, Patrick's eye was only black and cloudy where the bottom lid covered it. By the time we got to Butler, a ten minute drive from Broad Ripple, the discoloration had moved around one side of his eyeball. I'm thinking to myself that Beethoven was deaf and he overcame it. Patrick could lose his eyeball and still be an engineer...
My dad took one look at his eye and said Patrick was fine. I started to get weepy. Was he sure? Of course he was sure. Anyone who has met my dad knows he's always sure. Patrick hit his eye. What I thought to be black was actually purple, my dad insisted. He had a little hemhorrage under the cornea (?). It was to get worse before it got better. Whew. My baby is fine. My baby looks like a little demon-child with his creepy purple-turned-red-turned-yellow-and-red eyeball, but he's fine. He doesn't even know what happened.
I don't even know what happened. My theory is this: Patrick has been trying to escape the confines of his bed. My guess is that, in such an effort, he slipped back in and slammed his eye on the corner. In the end, it's ok, so no need to worry. He'll be in his big-boy bed in no time. I'm happy that we got pictures. See below.
1.) Right after the nap
2.) About 2 hours post-incident
3.) About 3 hours post-incident
3.) A day or so later
(There was a point that it covered the whole visible eyeball, but we don't have any pictures, sadly.)
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