Here's soap in your eye

On a cool, sunny Wednesday, I was sitting in front of the Peete's in West Portal, San Francisco, drinking a latte when my phone rang. It was Rick.

"Queen Teen just squirted liquid soap straight into her eye and I rinsed it out the best I could but she wouldn't hold still or keep her eyes open so I'm not sure if I got the soap out and she's still crying and her eye's all red and I don't know what to do now."

Um, I thought. What am I supposed to do? I'm 2 and a half hours from you guys.

I did my best to be helpful, but he'd already done everything I would have, so I praised his quick action for rinsing the eye and told him give Queen Teen a kiss from me. It was Wednesday, so I'd be home after class, late that night. There was nothing else to do but wait and see.

How the hell did she manage to squirt soap directly into her eye? That girl is talented.

When I got home that night Queen Teen was asleep, but she woke up several times that night complaining that her eye hurt. I sat up with her, wiping it with a cool cloth and assuring her it would be okay. By the morning her eye was bright red and the lids swollen. I gave her a cool cloth to hold against her eye and she stayed home from school that day. She was rubbing it so hard the area around her eye socket was bruised and raw. We couldn't get her to stop, and we didn't want to tie her hands behind her back. After dinner that evening, Rick and I decided to take her to the ER because her eye was looking worse and getting goopy.

The good news was that her eye was fine. Rick had done an excellent job rinsing it, despite Queen Teen's refusal to hold still. The bad was that she was having an allergic reaction to the soap which was why she was rubbing it so much. The doctor prescribed eye drops for the itching and antibiotic drops just in case it was getting infected and sent us home. That was the quickest ER visit I've ever experienced (less than 2 hours. gotta be a world record).

It took five days for the itching and redness to go away and another couple of days for Queen Teen to stop complaining that her eye was "bugging" her.  I felt bad for her and I knew it was genuinely bothering her, but after day four of constant whining I really wanted to tell her to "suck it up." I love my girl dearly, but boy can she be a drama queen!

All is well now. She's back in school and so am I. Her eye looks great with no sign of redness or injury. But I'd still like to know how she managed to squirt liquid hand soap directly into her eye. Did she lift the bottle to look at it with the spout pointed at her face and push the lever? I bet she never does that again.