Eye Issues

A normal Sunday for me usually involves standing at the till in a large department store, bleeping and bagging the various bits and pieces that people deem it necessary to buy.

This is the shop that I work in. That is not me. (photo from Ceeko's Flickr)

Today was meant to be a normal Sunday, until I climbed out of the shower, and started to get dressed. When it came to putting on deodorant, I picked it up, pressed the little button at the top. Nothing came out. Still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, I adjusted the nozzle. Again, nothing came out. I then tried to adjust it again, when it suddenly decided to blast a substantial amount of Sure For Men™ directly into my left eye. I yelped, and frantically splashed water into my eye to try to stop the stinging. It then dawned on me that it might be quite dangerous to have an eye full of deodorant, so I picked up the aerosol can, and tried to read the tiny print on the side. At that point, my right eye decided that stinging looked fun, and had a go too, forcing me to jam my eyes shut, and thus rendering me temporarily blind, and unsure of whether it would become a permanent thing.

Eventually, I began to be able to see again, and my eyes stopped stinging. I left for work, and walked there fairly uneventfully. However, when I arrived at the aforementioned large department store, it turned out the air conditioning was on. A few minutes after taking my perch behind the till, my eye started to cry. It didn't just start to water, or just begin to well up. Oh no, my tear duct decided that the perfect time to irrigate my eye was just when a customer was coming to the till. And while it was at it, the tear duct apprently decided that my entire face could do with a clean, and dutifully provided enough tears to do so.

The culprit.

After attempting to stem the flow with various things from the medical box, which should probably have been thrown out in 1987, I decided to attempt the trek to the 'eye casualty' at the local hospital. Normally a fairly simple walk, but with one eye out-of-action, a surprisingly difficult one. After meandering my way across Reading, and arriving at the hospital, I found a map that explained various departments and wards of the hospital. As some kind of joke, the label for the eye clinic seemed to be in the smallest font ever. After finding it, and  after a short wait, I saw a doctor, who knowingly nodded when I explained what I'd done, then proceeded to poke around in my eyes, testing them with litmus paper, weird lights and cleaning solution, before prescribing some eye drops and advising me that the dryness is going to last for last a few days. I'm now sitting on the sofa, applying eye drops every few minutes, and scowling at the deodorant can on the floor, where it can stay for a while, as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, I wouldn't recommend spraying deodorant in your own face. Although I imagine my eye now smells excellent. And it certainly won't sweat any time soon.