Saturday, March 25, 2006

Eye for an Eye

I got banged in the eye a couple days ago playing basketball. I took a picture to show to send to some friends to garner some sympathy.

Here's how it looks for real:










Here's how it looks when I use the filters on Picassa to "enhance" the detail. Will picture number 2 get me more sympathy?



Along those lines, if you play ball long enough, you'll get hurt. During the 20 years I've played pickup basketball, I've seen ACL's blown out, Achilles tendon's ruptured, broken wrists, displaced patellas, broken digits, and so on.

Basketball is a rough sport. And, it's number 1 in eye injuries.

Sports cause more than 40,000 eye injuries each year. Overall, basketball and baseball cause the most eye injuries, followed by water sports and racquet sports.

According to the website familydoctor.org,

Common types of eye injuries are blunt trauma, penetrating injuries and radiation injury from sunlight.

Blunt trauma occurs when something hits you in the eye. Blunt trauma causes most sports-related eye injuries. Some serious examples are an orbital blowout fracture (a broken bone under the eyeball), a ruptured globe (broken eyeball) and a detached retina (the part of the eye that is sensitive to light and helps you see). Bruising of the eye and eyelid (a "black eye") looks bad but usually is a less serious injury.

So what's my point? No point really. Just looking for sympathy. (See picture number 2)

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