Eye Dilema

Not much has been happening here over the past couple of days. I have been working in the clinic, seeing the usual; back pain, abdominal pain, headache, eye glued shut with super glue, parasites etc.

A boy arrives from far from here (hours). Locals don't measure time here in distance as much as they measure it in how long it takes to arrive at a certain location and that is dependent upon the weather. While we are currently here in the dry season, when it rains it can often be impossibe to travel. To get to the hospital you have to cross through one river when coming from the west and two rivers when arriving from the east. If there is rain up in the mountains the rivers can become dangerous if not impossible to cross.

Anyway this gentleman of 16 years was applying super glue above his head and it dripped into his right eye subsequently gluing his eyelid shut...three days ago. So he arrives with an eyelid that is swollen as if he'd been punched or stung by an insect.

Fortunately I have some experience in this sort of thing...eyelids being glued shut that is. Back when I was a resident Dermabond had just come into use. Dermabond is medical grade skin adhesive with the same properties as super glue. Anyway, I was repairing a laceration on the eyebrow of a toddler when some of the glue dripped into his eye subsequently gluing his eyelid shut. I quickly looked at the parents to see if they had yet noticed...they had...they were watching me like a mother bear watches her cub. I would like to say my knowledge and experience from medical training kicked in and I calmly resolved the situation. That however would be far from the truth. I did what any person whose accidently glued his/her fingers together with this adhesive would do, used brute strength to physical seperate the eyelids. It worked amazingly well, the lac was repaired, the eye was open and I told the parents this was a "common occurence when we repaired these sorts of things"...that quote was the result of my extensive medical training...

Alright, back to our adolescent with the same problem. I remember back to the toddler and quickly and forcefully seperate his eyelids. Amazingly it works just as it did 10 years ago, the only problem is that all his eyelashes are now located on his upper eyelid...hopefully they'll grow back...