Alan's Acid Trip...Far Out Man.

Everyone thinks, if you live in Florida you must have a pool. I thought that way too when I first moved here, and when I bought this house the pool was important. I used to go in the pool every day during the summer, but as the years have gone by the frequency has gone down. Way down, this year I’ve used the pool four times. The problem is, even if you never use it you have to maintain it. I could pay a pool service $80 or more a month to do the maintenance, but they only come once a week. By the sixth day the water is looking a bit green. So I do my own pool maintenance. I scoop out the leaves, scrub down the sides, and I add the chemicals. Chlorine, muriatic acid, algaecide, clarifier, etc....

I was adjusting the pH level Saturday morning. I was pouring the muriatic acid into the pool which I have done before. Usually I close my eyes or wear a pair of glasses to protect my eyes. For some reason I did it with my eyes open and of course a drop of acid flew up directly into my left eye. It burned. In a panic I stumbled over to the garden hose and started flooding my eye with water. As I did that the hose dragged across the pool deck and spilled the open container of acid. This released noxious fumes. All I could think of was the movie ‘Alien’ and the acid blood of the creature eating through my eye and the pool deck.

After five minutes of thoroughly washing my eye and the deck with water, I calmly went into the house and told Mark "You need to take me to the emergency room.". Well you would have thought I told him the grim reaper was waiting right outside the door. "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH LORD PLEASE.....OH NO WHAT'S HAPPENED? OH GOD, PLEASE NO BLOOD....OH JESUS WHAT’S BEEN CUT OFF?" and on and on went Mark. As I have said before Mark cannot handle stressful situations.

After a scary ride to the E.R. at Holy Cross Hospital and a forty five minute wait for a doctor to see me, everything turned out fine. The doctor explained why they weren’t in a big hurry to check my eye. Acid burns the surface and then doesn’t allow anymore to be absorbed into the eye. Then he said "If it had been an alkaline your eye would have been liquefied." Nice to know.