Saturday, October 5th, 2019, after a couple of hours cutting the hillside by my home with a weed trimmer / brush blade, I thought the task was done. I shut the trimmer off and set it down. Removing my safety glasses, I proceeded to inspect my work. Upon returning to retrieve the trimmer and store it, I spotted a small patch by the boathouse I had missed. It was an area that would take mere seconds. I started the trimmer, put the spinning blade to the small patch and my life changed forever. A brief graze on the metal retaining wall broke a fragment from the blade, firing the metal shard into and through the center of my right pupil.

Friends who know me, know how safety minded I am. Heck, my line of work involves safety products, and I make a point to lead by example. So the immediate thought when the injury occured was, “After 50 years I’m going to lose my vision in an eye because I failed to use my safety glasses for a mere few seconds.”

What followed was a trip to the local ER who sent me to a local ophthalmologist shortly thereafter. The ophthalmologist in turn sent me to a specialist at a hospital in St Louis. The specialist sewed up the front of my eye to prevent draining. Two days later they performed surgery to drain the gel, remove the metal from the back of my eye with a magnet, and replenish the eye of gel. They lasered my retina and filled it with gas to assist repairing it.

Two months later, during a follow up, they discovered the retina hadn’t healed correctly which led to a surgery to correct the issue. This time oil took the place of the gas, in hopes of allowing the retina to heal. My next appointment was scheduled in 3 months time. Two days prior to that appointment, as luck would have it, the COVID pandemic reared its ugly head and my appointment was postponed until further notice.

My next appointment would come six months after my last surgery which led to a fourth surgery in July to remove the oil from my eye. Eight weeks later, surgery number five took place. A cornea transplant and lens replacement involving sixteen stitches. My eye resembled a clock face. It was another four months before they would start removing stitches, two stitches per visit, every two months. It took an entire year for the stitch removal process. In the end doctors decided to leave four stitches. Five months later, almost two and half years after that fateful day in early October of 2019, I was fitted with a special SCLERAL contact lens to complete my treatments.