Eyes Wide Shut

I had my doubts about our plans for Saturday night.

M. and I had plans to go to our church’s-dinner-and-a-movie night. I was excited to see the movie again, but – call me crazy- I wasn’t really sure that “Fireproof” combined with Mexican food would be promoting marital harmony.

Braden and his friends watched the movie with us, while the smaller children watched a short movie and played in the nursery.

Near the end of the movie, a friend came and asked me to come with him. Apparently, Colson had somehow cut himself and needed me. I went to the kitchen, where the people in charge of the nursery were helping to clean him up and calm him down.

I was taken aback by what I saw. Colson sat on a counter, his face covered in blood. His hands and arms, and his neck, chest and stomach were also covered. I couldn’t even see where the wound was!

Slowly, we got him calmed down, and he explained that they were playing a game, and he was running and hit himself on the corner of a counter. As we cleaned his face, I could see a deep puncture just under his right eye, on his upper cheekbone. It wasn’t very large, but it was deep, and bled a lot.

Once M. and I got the boys home, we decided to take Colson to a doctor. His wound wasn’t large, but it was deep and didn’t want to stop bleeding. We were thinking that he might need a suture or two.

At this point it was 9:30 p.m. The two places open were the urgent care, and the ER. This situation didn’t cry out “Emergency Room” to me, so I drove to the Urgent Care.

The PA there cleaned the wound and determined that a suture probably wasn’t necessary, but we needed to close the wound so that it could heal without much scarring. She, along with a nurse, held his wound closed and applied Dermabond (sort of like superglue) to hold the wound closed as it healed.

Colson was calm and held very still … until several drops of the Dermabond rolled into his right eye. It stung, and he did what any of us would do – he closed his eyes shut to keep out more of the glue.

Unfortunately, in doing so, his eyelids glued shut. At this point, in pain and in a panic, Colson started screaming. The PA left the room to find out what to do, and I held a soaked washcloth over Colson’s eye, hoping that the water would help keep the Dermabond from setting firmly. (Dermabond does not like prolonged exposure to water.)

The PA and the doctor called the local opthamologist who agreed to meet us at his office. We fashioned an eye patch out of gauze and some stretchy tape, and followed the doctor’s car to the opthamologist’s office.

By this time, it was 10:30 p.m. Colson had been up two and a half hours past his bedtime, he hurt, and his eye was glued shut. As I carried him into the opthamologist’s office he observed, “This is your office? Hm. Nice place.”

Thankfully, the opthamologist was wonderful, and very patient with a scared, hurt, and sleep-deprived preschooler. He even offered to give him a piratey-looking eye patch to wear! After the exam, and a brief attempt to tease the eyelids apart, he determined that Colson’s eyeball seemed to be fine, and we would just have to wait for the glue to wear off on its own.

So, here is Colson the following day.


His eye is already starting to blacken. He has both eyes closed, because he hasn’t yet learned how to wink. So he’s not able to keep one eye closed while opening the other eye. However, when he wears the patch we made, or holds a washcloth over his right eye, he’s able to open the left eye easily.

Thankfully, by Sunday night the glue had worn off enough for him to open his eye. He’s still got it covering his lashes, but that’ll wear off eventually. He’s healing nicely, and loves the attention his black eye gets him from others.

Last night we went back to the Urgent care center to visit the PA. Colson wanted to say hello, and I wanted to let her know that he was okay.

I came home and told my husband that he should be very proud of me.

I resisted the urge to lecture the PA and remind her that she had violated the most important rule in medicine:

First, glue no Harm.



(Ba DUM Bum!)