When Destini was six years old, her eye fell out. No, really.
Okay, let me back up a bit.
It was a Sunday evening and we were in town, parked at McDonalds. It was late, we were getting some food, and then heading home. Destini complained she didn’t feel well. Then she puked in the McDonals parking lot. She’s probably not the first person to do that, so I didn’t think much of it.
We got home and she continued to feel sick. I tucked her into the couch cushions and I joined her on the other half of the sectional…which is what I did back then if my kids were sick. Now, they are lucky if I give them a bowl beside their bed. Anyway…
We woke in the morning to find that Destini’s right eye was…how shall I say…swollen completely out of her head. The eye was still intact. It was completely closed, red all around, and bulging out like a golf ball. Maybe a racquet ball.
Unsure what to do, I drove her six miles away to her trusted doctor. I’d barely made it in the door when the receptionist alerted the doctor, who was on the phone with a specialist seconds later, they ushered me back to my car and sent me across town.
At eleven o’clock I stepped foot in the ear/nose/throat specialists office and twenty minutes later he sent us to the hospital to check her in for surgery. While she was being prepped, they explained to us what was happening.
Destini had gotten a simple sinus infection. However, the infection was a strain so aggressive, that it had very quickly eaten through the bone separating her eye from the sinus cavity, and it had taken over her eye orbit. From there, they had no idea how much damage had been done.
“The bone the infection has eaten through is 1/8 inch thick…the same thickness that lies between her eye orbit and her brain. We’ll be looking for signs of brain damage when she awakes.”
And so we waited. We sat in a family waiting room and watched the clock tick by. One hour elapsed and we heard no word. I made phone calls to family members, to prayer chains, to anyone who would take my mind off what was happening.
Two hours went by. Still nothing. More waiting.
Three hours and finally the doctor came in. It looked good, he said.
The infection had abscessed throughout her eye orbit and they’d had to remove all the fluid and infection from both her eye and her sinuses. They inserted a drainage tube that entered through a hole between the bridge of her nose and the corner of her eye, then it went through all four sinus cavities, and came out her nose. She’d be waking soon, they said, and we were to look for signs of brain damage…because they couldn’t be sure it hadn’t spread.
For six days Destini lay in the hospital bed while we watched to see if they infection had done any further damage, or if it was done. The tube that entered near her eye was wound up on her forehead and taped in place. She looked like a science project.
Twice a day the nurse would come in and plunge fluids through the tube, which Destini then had to blow out her nose, clearing the way for any missed infection to make it’s way out. The first two times they did it…they used a peroxide solution.
Think about what peroxide does when you put it on a tiny cut. Now imagine it rushing through your head. It was horrifying. Destini would scream and cry, and I’d have to hold her down while the nurse plunged it in. Then she’d blow as fast as she could, trying to get it all out.
By day three, the doctor decided it just wasn’t worth it, so they switched to saline. It went much more smoothly after that.
Destini was released on day six and sent home with the tube still in place, taped snuggly to her forehead. Every day, twice, she leaned over the bathtub while I plunged saline through her nose. For four months, we plunged and blew, plunged and blew.
Then one day the tube just came flying out of her nose. So I took her in and they removed the tube from her eye. And for three more months after that, she leaned over the tub, twice a day, and I squirted a turkey baster of saline up her nose….like happens when you dive into the pool…and then she’d blow like crazy. The point was to keep scar tissue from building up. But it didn’t work and she ended up back in for one more surgery.
It never would have occurred to me that something as simple as a cold…turned into a sinus infection…turned into an abscess…could cause such damage. Lesson learned on taking things lightly, and now my kids even so much as sneeze, and I’m watching them like a hawk.
It’s been eleven years now and Destini shows no signs of brain damage…any more than the average teenager. She has a scar where the tube entered, and her right eye is slightly droopy. Other than that all she came away with was a really cool story…and not a single photo of the swollen eye, or the tube sticking out of her face all those months.
But she does like to mess with people once in a while by randomly saying, “Hey mom, remember when my eye fell out?”
