Nudnik

Stupid, dumbassery, schmendrick...

After my swan dive over the Peloton that landed me in the hospital several months ago, I have made sure to brace my feet when I try to adjust the bike seat, and only after I am sure that I have a handle on where my body is in relation to the bike, do I attempt any maneuvers like loosening the tie string on the gel cap, or making sure that the gel cap is situated where my tuchas will eventually go. I figure that landing head first in a fall and ending up needing a CAT scan because you trip over your own two feet, you can laugh it off and say what a goof the first time, do it a second time, and you really feel you need to start thinking about elder care.

Well needlesstosay, while I haven’t required any more hospital trips lately, it was only because everything healed the way it was supposed to. Basically, I have become a nudnik.

It started off as our usual evening walk with the dog. Now what happens on these walks is that I am a bug magnet. To say that gnats love me is an understatement. They think I am their queen.

The minute I get outside they swarm around me as if there is nothing else around. I am constantly swatting them away. Nothing stops them from stalking me throughout our walks. Even in the hot hot hot weather when I wore a neck fan, which I thought would blow them away, they somehow found a hole in my protective personal ozone layer and would make a beeline for me.

Hubby thinks they love to get near me because I let off a particular feremone. Well if that is true, those are some horny gnats. Let me tell you.

So, the other day, when we started our walk, one of the gnats not only zeroed in on me, but ended up in my eye. Yes, gross. Yes, it hurt. Luckily the hubby grabbed the outdoor hose and we were able to rinse the bug away. (While I screamed the entire time. No I was not calm, cool, or collected) And yes it was dead. Or at least it looked dead.

I was terribly cranky (I wouldn’t have wanted to be near me, but luckily hubby took it in stride), but we still went for the walk.

Coming back home, I started to get antsy thinking that maybe some of the bug was left in my eye (I was channelling Howie Mandel and his story of the bluefly that laid eggs on his arm, with the baby flies hatching [shudder] when he as a child, which was what triggered his OCD) and wanted to make sure everything was washed away.

So hubby suggested I do take some of the saline solution he uses for his contact lenses and rinse out the eye. Easy peasy…right?

Sure it’s fine until you pick up the wrong solution.

I figured since he wears his contacts most days, with 2 open bottles and 1 sealed one, the sealed bottle had to be another bottle of the cleaning solution and not the saline. So I picked up one of the already open bottles and squirted it into my eye. (yes, I know, I should have looked at the label.)

Big mistake…big mistake.

I think they call that a chemical burn.

Anyway…after the shock of the burning sensation subsided (seconds, not minutes), I immediately began to flush my eye with cold water. It did seem to do the trick.

I was able to walk downstairs and tell the hubby what I had done. Yes, he wanted to take me to the emergency room. I said, “no.”

I could see fine, and while there was redness, there was no pain.

“If I have issues we can go to the emergency room,” I told him.

So I went about my evening. In the middle of the night my eye was a little crusty after sleeping, so I went to the bathroom and checked. It was red and swollen, but I could see fine. Rinsed my eye again, and went back to bed.

Woke up the next morning and I could still see fine, but the under eye area was 3 times the size it should be. It looked like I had a little plum under my eye. It didn’t hurt, but the area was obviously not happy.

Checking Dr. Google, to make sure I had done everything the way I was supposed to (because Dr. Google is still better than going to see a real doctor), it said that the swelling could take 24-48 hours to go down.

So I decided to put some ice on the swollen area. I had some special ice patches from the dermatologist office for when I had some work done (My vanity project, having the doctor remove the xanthelasmas that I am prone to under my eye). And I used those for a little bit. Not too long, because the ice actually bothered my eye. (Yes, I kept the eye closed when I used the ice patch)

And the next day the swelling was going down, and by the 2nd day it was gone.

So no need for the emergency room, or urgent care.

But this new era of my life where I am prone to hurting myself either due to carelessness, being in a hurry, or simply not thinking things through has got to stop.

What is it about age that our ability to think properly diminishes. Now I remember when I was in the hospital after losing the fight with my Peloton, the nurse practitioner explained that the older you get the more prone you are to hurting your brain. This is because your brain does shrink as you age, leaving more room for the brain to swish around inside your skull when you are jostled.

So the reality of the shrinking brain causing brain injury coalesces with the idea of the reality of a shrinking brain making you dumb …or dumber as it were (some people are just ridiculous to begin with). Forgetting to look at the actual label on a bottle of potential blinding agent before you put it in your eye might just qualify as one of my more nudnik moves of late.

I have decided that I am going to start writing down the old-lady-hurt-herself stuff that I do, so I can read about it every day in order to remind myself, to remind myself, to pay attention to the world around me, and to take my time, and not assume what a label says, to actually read the label instead.