I am so sorry, faithful customers and costumers, for my failure to get the shop open as promised on Thursday, October 8. That very day my oldest son, Arthur, was helping me with some cleaning and lifting chores around the shop in anticipation of your arrival when I was attacked by a vengeful bush!
Well, it wasn't that dramatic until I started my caterwauling. . .
I was showing Arthur which offending branches of the over-grown bushes needed to be trimmed away from the Costume Porch. I turned my head to look at him to ask a questions and when I turned back toward the bushes a sharp twig on a leafless branch inserted itself behind my glasses and raked across my unsuspecting left eyeball.
It dropped me like a knock-out punch to a glass jaw. I didn't pass out, but I did make a scene. It felt like my eyeball had popped.
Fortunately Arthur is an EMT and never looses his cool, even when his mother is loosing hers. He got me into the house to flush my eye with luke warm water. By then my husband was home. Once calmed down I was able to put my glasses on and briefly check out the damage through my bifocal. The good news was that I could see it. The bad news is that I could see it - the big gouge in my cornea - nauseating, if you ask me. So at 5:21 in the afternoon I called the clinic to see if I needed to go to urgent care or the ER.
In exactly 52 minutes 37 seconds, plus two additional calls on my cell phone to make sure they were, indeed, answering calls in the order in which they were received, a very apologetic triage nurse got on the phone to answer my questions. She kept apologizing for the wait, and when she learned that I wasn't calling with Swine Flu suspicions, apparently the cause for the eternal wait, she actually said, "Oh, for Pete's sake!" Which prompted me to apologize saying that I felt really stupid for poking myself in the eye with a stick, and I wouldn't have called except it really hurt!
"Oh no no," she corrected, "you need to be seen. Eye injuries are painful and you need to come in. I'm just sorry it had to happen today. You should have called the eye clinic. They would have brought you in right away."
"I tried," I replied, "but they were already closed and routing calls to your desk."
Touche'. She directed me to ER and promised they would be expecting me. I dispatched Dale back to the Costume Shop to repair the water pipes and get the furnace running. Arthur drove me to town, roles reversed from many previous journeys with the two of us in the car headed for ER!
They numbed my eye (thanks be to God!), irrigated it, used dye to look at the abrasion, "Wow, Mom. You scraped it good!", squirted antibiotic ointment all over it and sent me home with a patch and instructions to use Ibuprofen and Tylenol 3 and see the eye doc in the morning if it didn't feel better.
DAY TWO
I didn't sleep well last night. In fact, I confess to more than one episode of crying like a baby. There were moments when I wished I was in labor and delivery rather than feeling like someone was twisting a rusty fork in my eyeball. It was bad. And I didn't look good this morning, nor did I feel good. I took more pain-killers at 5 am and finally got my best sleep between 5:30 and 10 am.
Oops. The Costume Shop was supposed to open at 10 today. Oh well. I dragged my sorry ass out to the shop and changed the outgoing message on the phone and put a pathetic note on the door:
CLOSED - due to family medical emergency. Will reopen on Saturday, October 10. Sorry for the inconvenience. Sigh.
Dale had already gone to work and Arthur had a class at noon. I needed a ride to the eye doctor by 11:30 am. No way I could drive myself, too many tears and extremely light sensitive.
My hero of the day, Barb, moth-balled her tomato juice manufacturing operation for the afternoon and came to my rescue. I protected her from walking into the potentially flu-infested clinic and sent her off on her own errands as I ventured into the clinic. I kept my hands in my pockets, gave the people wearing ominous blue masks a wide berth, and used my own pen to write my co-pay check. Blah blah blah . . . . .
After two doctors, $115 in co-pays, one pharmacist, and $32 in eye ointment, I rest assured that my eye will be fine. In fact they think it will be fine by Sunday, because eyes heal very quickly.
Yes, the shop will be open on Saturday, finally.
Thanks be to God. and Thanks be to Barb!
Anyone wanna play Dress Up for Halloween?
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