Friday, July 11, 2008

Cover Those Balls Before They Burn!

Eyeballs people! Eyeballs!

When I was a kid we weren't as careful about the sun as we are today. I spent many a scorching afternoon lazing on my deck, (during my high school yrs) covered in either baby or cooking oil. Yeah. No coconut Tropicana for me Baby. I was goin' for EXTRA CRISPY!

Side note - Stay away from the 'baby oil and vinegar' concoction! That one can cause 2nd degree burns within a couple of hours of being under the natural fryer :-) I STILL have one little burn spot on my leg after that one... 10yrs later!


Now, we know better. We slather ourselves and our kids in SPF 1,000,000, wear shades, big floppy hats, park ourselves under wide umbrellas at the beach.


OK, well the SMART ones do. Others, like myself, are still spreading our blankets directly under that radiating god, getting comfortable, tilting our heads back and letting that little 'ahhhhhh' escape blissfully :-) Minus the baby oil of course ;-)

There is one place however it's hard to keep covered and protected.


In the water.

Sure the SPF is waterproof, but it's hard to keep shades on a diving, back flipping, cannon balling off a floating dock child.

Unfortunately, we've since found out that spending time in the water, and having the sun reflecting off of that water, can burn your EYEBALLS.

Sunday evening, we were on our way home after being out all afternoon. First the lake for a couple of hours, then to their father's where they worked on their treehouse.


We were at the the lake for awhile the day before as well. I'm still fighting this freakin' summer cold, so I wasn't swimming, but the boys spent alot of the weekend in the water.

I was saying something to Adam, turned around to look at him for a second and noticed his eyes.




Notice the red on the outside corners of both eyes.


"WHOA! Someone looks tired!" I thought he was just exhausted from the weekend.

On Tuesday, when I picked him up from day camp, the counselors commented on his eyes. They were still red. They suggested it was either pinkeye or sunburned eyeballs. Sunburned eyeballs?


I knew it wasn't pink eye, because he didn't have that goopy stuff in them. But I had him looked at that night anyway, had it confirmed the balls were slightly burned and got drops for them.

Sunburned eyeballs! Yes, it does happen.




More info on sunburned eyes HERE.


Keeping the balls covered so they don't burn again in the water is going to be a continuous challenge all summer, considering they're at the lake every day for day camp.

Hmmmm ... I wonder if anyone's invented tinted swimming goggles yet? Like the eyeglasses that darken when you go outside. Goggles that darken when you come out of the water :-) Consider this my patent registration if nobody's done so yet! lol Until I find some, I'll have to make sure he at least has his 'regular' swimming goggles packed, every day!

Cover those balls before they burn people! And all the rest of your parts too ;-)

K


2 comments:

CraftyLzrd said...

OUCH! Hope he's not in pain! *shudder* Shorty has goggles that are blue tinted, maybe something like that could help?

Kim's Korner said...

Hey Lzrd :-)

He complained of 'sore eyes' the first night. But not since. And now, the red is almost completely gone. But it took a good week!

Thankfully he didn't have the grainy feeling in the eyes, or the blurred vision.

And this weekend ... I bought two new pairs of goggles. One of them has sort of a permenant tint to it, so hopefully there won't be any further burnt balls this summer. Of the eyeball variety anyway ;-)