Page 109 - The Freckled Eye - Book

For the first few days, it felt like I got punched in the back of my eye. Maybe a
better way to describe it was like a strained muscle after working out with too
much weight. It was soar. There was also a light feeling of debris around my
eyeball. If you’ve ever had pink eye, it’s similar to that as far as redness and
irritation, but without the yucky eye goo.

Because I was taking Tylenol with codeine on a regular schedule, the pain I
experienced was at level 3, which isn’t bad. What I consider a level 10 pain is
when I broke my collar bone, 5 ribs and punctured a lung. Now that pain was
CRAZY! Having had that experience, I’d gave this pain a level 3. But I was
religious when taking the Tylenol with codeine. I did notice that after taking
the medication, I'd get really tire, so I ended up sleeping most of the first few
days. I knew my body needed to heal, after the surgery and all the stress I'd
been under from the failed plaque attempts. I needed the rest.

The next hurdle was Wednesday. I needed to take the lead patch off, remove
the bandage, see what my eye looked like and then put the necessary
ointment in. I must admit, I was nervous. I thought for sure my eyeball would
be bloody, super swollen, and bulging. Or maybe it would look like a fighter’s
eye, all black and blue. I didn’t want to look.

(Past Memory) - I remember as a kid, playing in the garage at our house in
Saratoga with my brother. We were climbing over everything. Then, I
suddenly lost my balance and fell into a 4 x 6ft glass picture frame that my
mom had leaning up next to our tool bench. There hadn't been a picture in it,
so when I fell into it knee first, it went right through the glass. I remember
getting up, brushing myself off, wondering how I was going to explain it to
mom. Then, mom quickly came out into the garage. She’d obviously heard
the load crash. “Teri Anne, are you alright?” she said in a frightened voice! I
said, “Yes, but I broke your glass picture frame.” Mom seemed relieved that
here baby was fine, until she looked down at my knee. There was a 2-inch
piece of glass sticking out of it, with blood running down my leg. As soon as I
saw mom’s face, I could see something was terribly wrong. So, I looked down
at my legs. Sure enough, I saw what she was looking at. And only until that
moment, I freaked out. Not that it hurt. It was the sight of it that sent me to
the moon! So that was a learning lesson for me. Don't look, or have
someone else look!

I had several things like this happen to me over my 47 years, so I knew…
DON’T LOOK! So I made Jay look. (wink, wink) Thank goodness, I had