Today, while running errands we bought some batteries for the digital camera, which explains why there haven't been many recent photos of the kids on the site lately. It only partly explains why we didn't get photographic evidence of Christopher's recent eye injury, the main reason being that we were pretty much too freaked out by the whole thing to even consider taking pictures.

A couple of Fridays ago, Christopher woke up complaining about his eyes--not unusual since he often has light sensitivity when he first wakes up. When Kari noticed him tearing up in the middle of eating his Cheerios, we took a closer look. What we saw was pretty scary. The iris of Christopher's eye was turning red--his cornea was filling with blood.

Of course, we got on the phone immediately and soon were riding the elevator up to the Eye Clinic at Strong Memorial. The doctors were great and responsive but, although we weren't waiting long, we could see that his eye was continuing to get worse during our brief wait. I should mention that this was happening in Christopher's blind eye. Due to his congenital glaucoma, his retina is totally detached in that eye, so we were worried, but not as panicked as we would have been (or as much as he would have been) if this had happened in his good eye.

We learned that this condition, which is called hyphema, can be caused by blunt trauma to the head or the eye itself. If this should happen to you, get your butt to the emergency room. THe increased pressure in the eye may cause further problems and the doctor needs to check for other signs of damage (detached retina, concussion, etc.) that may have resulted from whatever trauma may have occurred.

It turns out the Christopher is susceptible to this because the blood vessels behind his detached retina are especially fragile, and since that eye is already non-functional, we were told that as long as Chris is not in any pain and the blood eventually drains, there is little to worry about--there isn't much more damage that can be done. The doctors asked us to avoid “activity,” which well, Christopher is a 3-yr-old boy with no shortage of energy, so we took that advice with a grain of salt.

Over the weekend his eye improved and the follow-up appointment confirmed that all is well. It was pretty freaky, though. I wish I had taken a picture, but it occurs to me that it would have looked very similar to camera-flash-induced red-eye. So, using the magic of Photoshop red-eye addition, here's a dramatization of what it looked like at the time.