An Eye for Trouble

What a month Trevor is having! First, he breaks his leg during the first official game of the football season. It killed him to miss the second game, but he wasn't mobile enough to manage. Last Tuesday evening, I drove him to the team's away game so he could cheer them on from the side lines. It was quite comical watching his arms flail as he did jumping jacks with them, to the best of his ability, in a wheelchair - ha!

I was glad this week's game was a home game on our own field. While last week I stayed with him during the game (fearing play of the ball might come plowing into the sidelines and further damage his healing leg), this week, I dropped him off and he wheeled himself up the incline and into the stadium. I thought we were home free when I picked him up and drove him back to our house.

Oh, how wrong I was! During the game, Trevor said he felt something enter his eye. Despite the eye irritation, he didn't mention it until bedtime. We have a glass eye wash cup for such needs. He swished water over it several times, trying to extract the object on the surface of the eyeball, but to no avail.

The following morning, I scheduled a doctor's appointment. I tried to explain that it wasn't merely a speck on the eye. In fact, I described it as a pimple on the sclera (white of the eye). The nurse-practitioner who looked at his eye said it appeared the eye was trying to heal over the speck. At least, it had a film over it. She prescribed antibiotic drops and scheduled an urgent appointment (a few hours later) with my optometrist. At the eye doctor's office, they were once again perplexed. If it was a foreign object on the eye, how was it so deeply embedded (given that Trevor experienced it as a sudden irritation the previous night)? After a futile attempt to extract it with a Q-tip, she felt he needed to see the ophthalmologist the next morning.

I recall her saying he might have to dig the speck out of the film covering it and do stitches. Had I heard her correctly? Stitches??? To the eye??? Yikes!

Praise God, it didn't come to that. The first ophthalmologist decided it was most likely a cyst as opposed to a foreign body in the eye. Since he'd seen nothing like it before, he wanted to be in the room when the senior ophthalmologist viewed the eye and offered his prognosis. They ended up in agreement. The senior ophthalmologist suggested a speck of something entered the eye briefly and the eye formed the cyst of fluid to fight off the invasion. Considering the cyst is not causing any problems (no discharge, no pain, no vision loss, etc.), they recommended we continue with the eye drops and watch the progress of the cyst (please, Lord, don't let it develop to the point of some of the "cysts on the eye" shown in Google Images - double yikes!).

So, next Friday will be a full day for Trevor, with an ophthalmologist follow-up in the morning and an orthopedic specialist follow-up in the afternoon. Although we're hoping for good results there - and perhaps a further reduction in cast size - we're worried about the healing process because he has taken three falls on the crutches, thanks to slippery bathroom floors, stray backpack straps hanging out into the walkway, and lack of room to maneuver. Poor boy deserves to catch a break sometime.

You can't keep him down, though. He begged to go to the varsity game tonight,but with rain in the forecast, that's out of the question. So glad his spirits haven't dampened. It thrilled him when I offered lunch out at Dairy Queen in between his two appointments. I promised "a treat for the trial of your trouble, Trevor."