When I was a kid I used to work at a full service gas station. If there are any of you out there who don’t know what a real full service station was, ask an old guy like me. I bring up the gas station job because I received an injury there that has had an effect on my entire life. My eyesight was damaged to a point that to this day causes me problems.
One day in September of 1978, it was the first day of my senior year of high school, gasoline kicked back from the car I was filling and splashed into my eyes. Actually, more splashed onto my shirt, but all I felt was the burning in my eyes. I remember grabbing my shirt and using it to wipe my eyes. This, in hindsight, was not the most intelligent thing I’ve ever done. I can almost still feel the emotion of realizing what I had done by wiping my eyes with the shirt. I distinctly remember that split second before the pain, and it was intense, asking myself why I had done it. It’s always the weird things in any of my life’s crisis that I seem to recall better than the actual incident.
Once the pain set in I remember yelling for help because it hurt so much. I could see but I could actually feel the heat in my eyes. There was a guy at the station working with me named Keith Miles, who was just a moose of a guy, that came out and lifted me on to his back and took me inside the station to the sink. This was not very difficult as this was after I got sick and lost 120 lbs. I was a strapping 123 lbs. He put my head under the water and kept yelling at me to open my eyes. Keith was a real intimidating guy; I did as I was told. To this day I feel I owe him my eyesight. I have no idea where he is or how to get in touch with him but if I could I would let him know how I feel about it.
Once the dousing was over I felt well enough to go on about my business. Again, this was not a day of my smartest decisions. After working for a few minutes my eyes felt like I was under a sunlamp. I called home and told my mother what had happened and that I would be all right. I told her I was well enough to drive myself home, that intelligence of mine kicking in again, but I would appreciate it if she would just have a bag of ice waiting for me to put on my eyes when I got there. I can’t imagine what she thought, obvious concern, but trusting me enough to know my capabilities.
Once I got myself home I went into the den and was watching television with my brother David. I had the bag of ice that I kept putting over my eyes and convinced myself and Mom that everything was going to be ok. Then the phone rang and I yelled out the typical, “I’ll get it”. I stood up, took about three steps, and every light in the world went out. I was standing just inside the kitchen and couldn’t move. I yelled for help and David asked what was wrong. I told him I couldn’t see and he went and got mom. They got me in the car and mom took me to the emergency room.
There’s a little contention about what happened next, but this is my story, and I’m telling it from my point of view. Mom stopped the car and told me to get out and she would go park the car. I stood outside the car thinking about how odd it must look for me to be standing in what I thought was the middle of the parking lot, with my arms outstretched trying to get a feel of where I was.
Someone asked what was wrong and I said I had gas in my eyes. I was then pulled and pushed for what seemed like a couple hundred yards to a chair. I had no idea where mom was but these people obviously meant business. All kinds of chatter and movement and I started to get the feeling that I might have a bigger problem than I thought. I was mistakenly under the impression that I would have some sort of say on what was about to happen to me. I still couldn’t see anything and someone was pushing my head back. I started to get upset because they weren’t telling me what was going on. I remember shouting, “What are you doing to me”? And being told they needed to rinse my eyes with some solution and that it would probably hurt. I said I would need a second to prepare myself for it and was told in a rather forceful voice that there was no time for that and my head and face were pushed under a stream of some liquid that made my eyes burn worse than the original pain.
After cleaning out my eyes they placed patches on them and gave my mom instructions to put drops in them every four hours. I stayed like that for a number of weeks. For the first week or so I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see again. After that first week I was able to see light from dark and I knew I’d be all right. I’ve got a great many stories about things that happened during my blindness, furniture being moved and things of that ilk, but that can wait for another posting. I will say that I did have a wonderful network of friends who I placed a great deal of trust in and they helped me an enormous amount.
There are a number of things you learn about yourself when something like this happens. I know I became a much deeper thinker and observer of all that surrounds me. I also know that the experience helped shape the person I am today, as all of life’s experiences do. I sometimes wonder how, if any, different I would be if it had never happened? I’m not sure. I know it has somehow made me more guarded around people. More in the need to feel in control of myself at all times. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. I think of the time I spent without sight often and always think of the things that event has shaped in my life. It was pretty traumatic after all and I can say there are not many of you out there that have gone through the same type of thing.
To this day, my eyes burn on a regular basis. I have a major issue trying to get drops into them to soothe the burning sensation. It’s quite a joke when an Optometrist tries to put drops in my eyes. I end up taking a Visine bath. My ex wife used to sit on my chest and have her legs on my shoulders trying to hold my face still enough to put drops in. It just got to be too much of a production so we just decided to go without. I buy these really expensive drops now that an eye Doctor said I needed and use much more of them than I should. I still end up getting more on my face than in my eyes. I still try though. It helps ease the burn a bit. I don’t really have a nice clean ending to this story, just something I wanted to talk about. Thanks for listening.
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