Beauty and the eye. And sundry leakages.

We made an unscheduled trip to A&E yesterday. Well, it was this morning when we got home!
That was my fault really since I am used to Barney getting stuff in his eyes. It goes with the job, bits of straw and dust follow him round and even return home with him (not as bad as cat hair but even more ubiquitous).
So when he said he had something in his eye, I was sympathetic but not much worried. Later, I tried to have a look at it but it was a bit gloomy and I couldn't see anything. Later still, I suddenly thought I really ought to have a proper look before he went to sleep with it, apparently, still in there, so I hied him off to the bright lights of the kitchen, sat him on a chair under the light (we'd just been watching 'The real life on Mars' so I made a crack about interrogation - received rather frostily) .
Oops! There was something in there all right. Not a huge thing but definitely an embedded thing - not to be removed by wife with damp kitchen roll I decided. Oh, huge guilt for enjoying the TV while the poor fellow was sitting there with a great big (tiny) thing in his eye! I am a bad wife!
Now it's funny that although Barney is as good as any man where it comes to man-flu and 'pain' and deserves a standing ovation for the dramatic productions over cramp (which is bad, I know, but if it was as bad as he makes it sound, he'd be dead by now), when it comes to potentially serious things, he goes all small and quiet,tells me very little and won't make the smallest move towards getting it sorted until I till him to.
I'm not sure if the longstanding family joke (his joke) about my father being a doctor and therefore me being a smartass where medical stuff is concerned is a case of 'many a true word spoken in jest'. So I should have guessed from the sad and patient look of suffering that it was a bit worse than the usual speck of dust! And when I said, right, we'll ring the doctor now, he made me feel even more guilty by looking anxious and trusting and red-eyed!
Well, I got brisk and efficient and rang the out of hours number and it seems that the local hospital doesn't do foreign bodies in the eyes. Off we went to A&E in Reading and were very lucky that there didn't seem to have been any major incidents in the area last night and he got seen quite quickly and the removal of the foreign body* was fairly swift and effective too. (Although the doctor who did the removal admitted that he wasn't used to the paper work because he normally worked in another department).

And now, I get to put drops in Barney's eye four times a day. (I have to say this is a great deal less stressful than it was when I had to do it for the cat - for one thing, I don't have to hold him upside down in my arms and stop all his arms and legs from scratching me and anyway he only has two of each unlike the cat who clearly had a dozen or so).
I also get to feel slightly guilty and apologetic that I didn't pay proper attention to his poor eye till the middle of the night. And relieved that my failure to do so hasn't resulted in some awful eye operation being necessary. And watchful over the recovery time because an eye infection is no joke!

Oh, and I get to see the foreign body, displayed on the end of a cotton bud since he brought it home with him (???!!). It's really very small. But close up and personal, I suppose, very large :)

On my way home from somewhere or other today, I stopped and had a wander round Hampstead Norreys Church. Unusually, it was open so I got the chance to see inside. I do love the smell of churches :) And the windows.
And the graveyards :)And when I got home, Youngest came visiting with Gorgeous Babe who gave me a sprig of lavender (picked from our back doorstep) as a present. and When Barney came home he got to have special cuddles because he's her favourite grandparent, and his eye is feeling much better (I'll soon be having trouble persuading him to keep bothering with the drops - it could get to me having to hold him upside down after all) so really, apart from the washing machine and the dishwasher leaking and the car window having stopped working when it's slightly open (so that's leaking too - I had to leave it with an umbrella inside last night), Er? Yes. apart from all that everything is fine :)
Oh well and the immersion heater making the power cut out last night but, hey, what's wrong with less hot water? It's Summer after all. (Ok we won't go there. It is Summer whatever the weather suggests. See.)
Now the dog would really really like to go out please and I suppose I would quite like to go to bed.
G'night

*I love this expression - makes me think of that Azimov book/film about the tiny people voyaging through the patient's body to do some kind of medical intervention which couldn't be done by a proper surgeon.