You Could Put An Eye Out!

Randy tried to kill me on Saturday, well at least take my eye out. I can explain…We went to Dubai on Friday so I could drive and do a practice run for my photography class that is in two weeks. I survived the drive minus a couple freak out moments but in the end we decided the hour drive in Dubai traffic is too much for me to do by myself at this point in my expat experience and decided to just stay in Dubai for the weekend rather than me driving there by myself. We booked a room for the weekend at the Atlantis resort and while I go to my all day photography class, Randy and Artem will hang out at the resort. The resort is absolutely gorgeous and I cannot wait to spend the weekend there. It’s on the man-made island called Palm Jumeriah; you may have seen pictures of it. It’s the one that looks like the giant palm tree. The resort has a huge water play area for the kids and Artem is going to have a blast. You can even swim with the dolphins there and they have an incredible aquarium that I’m sure Artem will love.

While we were in Dubai we stopped at Mall of the Emirates (my favorite Dubai mall) and found some cute pictures for Artem’s room. You might remember when I showed you pictures of Artem’s room with the bright green walls. Originally I wanted to repaint it but Ondrea said it reminded her of the book “Goodnight Moon”, ‘in the great green room there was a….’ so we decided to embrace the green and decorate around it. Randy put the whole room together before we arrived and covered the ugly hard tile floors with the colorful padded squares. I still need to find some curtains and bedding, but other than that, the room is pretty much done.

So on Saturday we were all in Artem’s room and Randy was hammering the hooks into the wall. Artem and I were over 10 feet away when one of the nails broke off the hook Randy was hammering and shot clear across the room into my eye. It was so surreal, I literally could see the nail coming straight at my eye but it was like it was in slow motion and I couldn’t duck fast enough. As soon as the nail hit, it gave me this sick feeling and I got an instant headache. We found the nail on the floor so I knew it wasn’t stuck in my eye but I was in a lot of pain. I thought I just scratched it and figured a good night’s sleep would make it go away. But by the next morning I was in a lot of pain and the eye would not stop watering and when I say watering, I mean so much tearing that it was running down my face, dripping onto my arms and running down my hands when I tried to blot it.

I called Randy at work and told him to come home so he could take me to the hospital. We walked into the Ophthalmology department without an appointment at 1:05 pm. By 2:00 pm we were downstairs at the Baskin Robbins having a chocolate shake. The doctor called me back right away and looked at my eye and said I had a “cornea erosion”, basically I had a chunk missing from my cornea. She put a contact lens Band-Aid on my eye and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and some moisture eye drops. I go back tomorrow for a follow up. The appointment cost me 50 dirham and my prescriptions cost 40 dirham, that’s under $27 US dollars for all of it AND I was at the hospital and pharmacy for less than an hour. This is the second time we have had to use the medical system here in UAE, the first was Artem’s finger, and each time we have been extremely pleased with the care we have received.

Tonight is the first night I have been able to type without my eye hurting and tearing. My vision is still very blurry in my left eye but I’m hoping it’s just the contact Band-Aid and once the doctor removes it tomorrow, my vision will improve.

With all the different languages in UAE, the pharmacist has to have an "international" way of letting a person know how often to take the medicine. Can you see how he told me how many times a day that I need to take the medicine?

One interesting side note on my eye drama, Artem has never shown us any empathy but on Saturday when I got hurt, he was very concerned and kept trying to rub me and touch me and asking me to hold him. Since then he keeps asking me if my eye hurts and tells me he wants to give me a “tiss” (kiss) and when I bend down, he gently kisses my eye. It’s nice to see this side of Artem and see him reach this attachment milestone, even if I had to take a nail to the eye to see this side of him.