Recurring Corneal Abrasion

This weekend, Dwayne had minor surgery on his eye. At the moment he's laying on the couch with a massive patch, tripping out on Vicodin.

Four years ago, when we lived in Indiana, my husband scratched his eye on a tree branch. Ever since then, he's been plagued with a "trick eye," as he calls it. It's not uncommon to hear him wake up in the middle of the night, stumbling toward the bathroom cabinet for eye ointment. About once a week, he wakes up with tears gushing down the right side of his face, and his nose running.

Finally, he went to an ophthalmologist yesterday. I spent the afternoon grading papers in a waiting room. After an hour and a half, Dwayne came out. "I've got recurring corneal abrasion," he said. "I’m going to need minor eye surgery."

As it turns out, when Dwayne scratched his eye all those years ago, the wound didn't heal properly. The new cells that grew over the injury never attached properly to the bottom layer and so for the last four years, Dwayne’s lid has been catching on the wound and tearing away pieces of his cornea.

Ouch.

My poor husband has been injuring his own eye over and over again.

The moral of the story - be careful with your eyes people! They’re not easy to fix.