It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Puts An Eye Out...

Actually, it's not even necessary that someone completely puts an eye out: a close call pretty much puts an end to the fun and games.  And so ended our time in Jemez Springs.

Nate, while chopping some kindling at our lovely campfire on October 1st, got a "stick to the eye."

Sadly, we have no pictures to post to show you just how horrific HIS eye looked when it first happened... but here is someone else's eye with the same injury (yes, shamelessly copied from the internet):

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So, when Nate came into the RV (where I was making hot cocoa... I think...), holding his hand over his right eye, and said "I think I really screwed up," that is about what his eye looked like.  In Nate's case, though, the blood was all the way up to the center of the eye (this is called a hyphema).

I knew it was bad, as soon as I saw it.  At MIT, I studied visual system development, so I knew just how fragile is the eye and all its delicate internal anatomy.

And, in the Jemez, we were an hour away from the nearest emergency room (east of us in Los Alamos).  So, I had him lie down with his head elevated on a pillow, while I frantically searched the internet and made a couple of phone calls for the right place-- not just the nearest place-- to take him for medical care.  In the end, we drove west and south, heading to the Sandoval Regional Medical Center ER (a branch of the University of New Mexico hospital system) just north of Albuquerque: it was over an hour and a half away.

Totally worth it.  It would have been better if there had been an ophthalmologist on duty at midnight, when we got there, but what are the chances of that?!

We were reassured by the doc that Nate had a completely "closed globe injury," which meant he had not ruptured the eye.  Great news, because open globe injuries most often result in blindness.  ;-{  Even so, I put Nate on strict bed rest (ok, propped up on the couch watching dick flicks, actually: there is just NO way to keep Nate lying in bed, doing nothing all day!).

Two days later, we returned to Albuquerque (to the main UNM hospital) for what we thought was an already-scheduled follow up ophthalmology appointment, only to find that no appointment had actually been set for us.  So, we did what anyone in such a situation should do:

We found a local brewery (Marble) and had lunch and a couple of beers!

The beer was great, but the menu was very small and the waitstaff seemed thoroughly uninterested in us.  Oh, well.  While we were there, we scrambled around on the phone and internet with various other options for ophthalmologists, hoping to score a miracle appointment that same afternoon... but no luck.

Meanwhile, back at the RV park (cue the dramatic music...) and unbeknownst to us, Steve (the owner) was trying to repair a leaking pipe on the main water line for the whole park, since he had taken a couple of reservations for the coming weekend, and, well, people sure do like to have their water.  We still don't know why Steve decided to do this on his own while we were gone, since the plan was for me to help him the very next day.  But, he ended up not being able to fix it and actually made it a bigger leak, while also getting stuck-- in terrible pain-- in the mudhole that was the only access to the leak.

So, the next day, I geared up in warm clothes (since it was VERY cold already: near freezing) and walked down to the pump house to help Steve with the leak, and-- surprise!-- got an angry earful about how we had totally let him down and were bound to keep letting him down.

In response to this totally out of the blue outburst, and already stressed out to the limit by Nate's eye injury and followup, I quickly decided we could not stay in Jemez Springs for the winter.  I came inside, told Nate what had gone down, and got online to see what Craigslist might hold for us.

Miraculous!  Just a few hours earlier, a small, inexpensive cabin in South Fork, Colorado had been posted.  Nate has always wanted to spend some time in Colorado, and we had actually tried to figure out how to spend a Christmas vacation in Colorado for the past couple of years, with no luck.  So, I called the cabin owner and found out the place sounded like it would work for us, but wouldn't be available until November 1st.

So, just ten days after his eye injury, Nate drove the Civic and I drove the RV out of Jemez Springs and to a second followup eye appointment in Albuquerque.  We stayed Friday and Saturday night, parked in front of our new friends' (Robert and Christine) home in ABQ and had a fabulous time hanging out with them.  They were so sweet to agree to having us come and stay with them, especially since we had JUST met them the previous weekend at Trails End!  Here they are, with their kitties, on their front porch:

Robert and Christine insisted we stay in their guest bedroom, but we felt our cats would totally freak out if we left them locked up in the RV without us overnight, so we slept in the RV both nights.  But, we ate every meal (including one brick-oven pizza dinner out on the town) together and went for a long walk around their neighborhood too.  Such a great visit!  Thanks to you both!

They also told us about City of Rocks State Park, which ended up being our next destination.  So, on Sunday October 13th, we pulled out of ABQ and headed south!

Up Next: The City of Rocks and The Big Dirt Highway...