a stupid thing to do

This year my list of stupid things I have done has lengthened substantially. It probably started with my 80 mile bike ride with my roommate the day before finals for Spring Quarter where we did not bring a bike repair kit (and as a result I got a flat tire). Then of course there was the continued running after my vaccinations to the point where it was painful to walk. Today however, my stupidity rose to a new level. In a desperate attempt to save the rest of my fish, they are now being treated with nitrofurasone (a scary antibiotic) and formalin (to kill any protozoans) and each tank is on a UV sterilizer courtesy of Dennis. Since the antibiotic is killing my biological filter, I am having to do frequent water changes again so this morning I was going through the water change and everything was going really well until I went to add formalin to raise the concentration to therapeutic levels (every time I do a water change now I have to calculate how much water I removed and add the appropriate amount of medications to the water I put in). Anyway, the formalin is at a very low concentration so I was trying to get an accurate measurement and there was an air bubble in the syringe I was using to draw up the medication. I tried tapping the syringe and the bubble didn't budge so I did something I have done thousands of times before as the tried-and-true method of releasing bubbles from syringes: flicking the syringe. Well, there happened to be a small amount of formalin on the outside of the syringe and when I flicked the syringe the air bubble rose gracefully to the top of the syringe but some of the formalin on the outside of the syringe spashed into my eye. To make matters worse, this particular medicine is 37% foraldehyde, 10-13% methanol and the rest is an inert aqueous solution. Approximtely two seconds after the flicking, my left eye started to burn. To give you an idea, this particular mixture of formaldehyde and methanol has an OSHA health rating and contact rating of 3 (severe). According to the bottle, a spash usually causes blindness. Formaldehyde of course is a suspected carcinogen as well so things were not looking good. After I screamed for my supervisor, Pete, I was whisked away to an eye wash station (never mind that this station is connected to the same water that is likely poisoning my fish) I flushed my eyes for about 5 minutes (that whole 15 minute thing seems really long when your eyes are burning) and then was rushed to the emergency room. While my eyes were being flushed, the burning was so intense that I was gasping for air. If I thought the 5 minute flush at Hatfield was bad, I was in for a treat at the emergency room. I was hooked up to a wonderfully painful apparatus that flushed a steady stream of saline into my eye for over half an hour. They took the pH of my eye afterwards and it was still too basic so they had to reinsert the apparatus and flush again. I think my eye was starting to hurt as much from the flushing apparatus as from the formaldehyde. Finally, my pH was close enough to normal and I got the pleasure of going through an eye exam. Fortunately, I still have 20-20 vision and there are no abrasions on my eye. I keep closing my good eye and checking, though, because I am super worried I will wake up tomorrow and be blind in one eye.
Besides the scary contraption, the emergency room visit wasn't all that bad, though. My wonderful supervisor Pete sat patiently through the whole ordeal entertaining me and asking the nurses what if they would give me more saline to prolong the embarassing and painful situation I was in. The doctor was pretty cool, too. He quickly realized I was a geek and told me all sorts of cool stories about strange cases he had seen throughout his career and gave me the product information sheets for all the drugs I received so could read them tonight. Thanks to the other person helping with my eye flushing, the entire staff of Hatfield quickly knew about my accident and the story got embellished to the point where I pointed the syringe toward my eye and squirted the entire contents into my eye and there was some debate as to whether I got formalin or nitrofurasone or both into my eye. I think I spent a good portion of my day explaining what happened to people.
I spent the rest of the day at work, despite Pete's protests. I finished taking care of my fish and saw a seminar entitled: "snailfishes: why?" by the world expert on snailfishes. Where else can you eat cookies and drink tea and listen for an hour on someone's expeditions in the sub-artic searching for snailfishes? I love Hatifield :)