a trip to the ER.

this morning, i woke up around 6:30 [after 3 hours of sleep] because helix was going insane. i jolted myself out of bed to find that my mom was crying hysterically, basically inaudible, and trying to come downstairs to my room. i ran over to her, and found out that she had mistakingly used nail glue instead of her eye drops. i told her to get her eye under running water, but she said she couldn't because it was sealed shut. CRAP. i tried calling my dad, but he didn't answer. so i looked up what to do, and decided to just take her to the ER.

when we got there, they got her checked in pretty quickly, but not without answering the same questions three different times. [i love that about the ER.] then we waited. and waited. and waited. a nurse popped into the room occasionally, but all he said were things like "i've never seen this before, so i don't really know what we're going to do." umm. thanks for the reassurance! i eventually got ahold of my dad, who had slept through his alarm. so he was frantically trying to leave the house as i explained where i was and why i was there. i think he was in a bit of disbelief when i first told him because he called me about ten minutes later and started asking questions. at that point, he tried to reassure me, but a lot of things were still uncertain because her eye was still sealed shut.

eventually, they put some mineral oil ointment on her eye, which was supposed to help it separate. it didn't quite work to the extent it was supposed to... i think she was crying too hard and washed most of it away, but crying was good for this situation too. the doctor finally came and basically pried her eyelids apart.
oh.
my.
gosh.
i couldn't watch it, but i definitely heard how much it was hurting.
i felt so bad. and it only made the pain worse for her because now she could move her eye more and all the hardened glue was able to scratch her eye more than before. the ER doctor tried to trim some of the glue off her eyelashes, but didn't have much success.

finally, the ER doctor gave us a referral to an ophthalmologist. she couldn't see at all at this point, so the nurse helped me get her into the car, and off we went. i got her all checked in at the office, but i had to leave for class at that point. i was going to just miss it, but she insisted that i go. my dad called again before i left, and when i told him that mom was pretty upset (still borderline hysterical because of the pain, and i'm sure also because of the uncertainty... she hadn't been able to see out of her eye and was keeping it shut for the meantime) he reassured me again, and he insisted on talking to her when i told him she was crying too hard to talk to him. he really did a good job of calming her down. :] that triggered my own tears though. funny how that works. my dad has a good way of telling us everything will be ok, but it tends result in me shedding some tears. i think at that point, my adrenaline rush was wearing off too, but i made my best effort to quickly wipe away the tears so my mom wouldn't catch on to the fact that i was crying. ha.

i went to class, but left after about 30 minutes. i got back to the ophthalmologist's office about ten minutes before she was done, and when i saw her, i felt instantly better. she looked so much better and so clam from when i left her. the doctor trimmed her eyelashes to get rid of lots of dried glue and removed a few large chunks from her eye. her cornea is scratched pretty badly, and her vision is really blurry in that eye right now, but it will improve over time. the ophthalmologist also reassured her that she sees this situation all the time, so i think that really helped her ease up on beating her self up over it.

i'm taking her in for a followup tomorrow afternoon. hopefully it will be all good news. my dad is going to try to get done at the hospital early enough to meet us at the appointment tomorrow. hopefully that will work out too.

so it was a very eventful day. it's so hard to see your mom hurting, and feel like you can't do much to help except provide plenty of tissues. i'm just really glad that she is feeling ok now... aside from her eye being very swollen and being in some pain. we got some food after we were home and showered and everything, and we had a good talk while we were eating along the everything happens for a reason lines. i think she was sad that she missed her golf tournament, but hopefully our talk helped a bit. :]

i had to take my midterm for psychology today... luckily it was online, and i had until 10pm to get it done. somehow i managed to get 100%. i was beyond tried and my mind was just completely out of it, so i was thinking that taking it would be pretty interesting taking it, but thankfully it was easy. the funny thing is that i changed my mind on two answers in the last minute [it's a timed test] and usually i regret doing that, but for once it worked out. i was pretty excited when i saw my score. haha.

alright. i'm way past being exhausted, but i can't sleep because i'm thinking about everything. i think i'll go start a new book and see if that does the trick.

so glad it's the weekend!