Product Warning Labels

You know all those warning labels on products that seem sometimes a little ridiculous? Or warnings that maybe makes sense to warn people and give them directions on what to do if they, say, ingest too much shampoo, but you wonder "how do you do that?" Toilet bowl cleaner, for instance, has a warning on it and directions on what to do if you get it in your eyes. It basically tells you to run water slowly over your open eye for 15-20 minutes, call poison control and/or call your physician for further treatment. The thought of holding my eye open under running water doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I always wondered how in the world could you get toilet bowl cleaner in your eyes? Well, yesterday while I was scrubbing toilets with toilet bowl cleaner, a very small drop of water splashed up into my right eye. Man, did it burn like fire. So I rinsed my eye, although not by running tap water directly into my eye, and flushed it with saline on and off for several hours. In case your wondering how it feels to get toilet cleaner in your eyes, its kind of like someone rubbing salt directly onto your eyeball. My eye burned for several minutes, and the rinsing did stop the burning. I then had a minor headache for a couple hours after that, and my eye felt like there was something in it, like an eyelash. Flushing with saline helped with that. That eye is now completely bloodshot. Today it feels fine, I can still see, but I look like hell. My left eye is all bloodshot because I ruptured blood vessels in it from my vomiting session over the weekend. Now the right eye matches, thanks to toilet bowl cleaner and my ability to splash toilet water 3 feet in the air and have a drop land in my eye. This really has been a fantastic week for me. I'm sure purty lookin' right now. It looks like I've been up for a week smoking and drinking. And I have to work tonight. Fabulous.