more than you ever wanted to know about superglue

I know this is called "kids this week", but this one is all about ME! This morning I got Superglue in my eye. How did I manage that? I was trying fix Chloe's broken heart by Supergluing her Cinderella gem back into her tiara. I squirted a pool of glue in the empty space in the tiara (I used quite a lot because lets face it, the stuff only sticks to skin anyway) and when I tried to place the gem in the space, it wouldn't quite fit so I pushed until it popped into place which forced the Superglue to squirt out of the tiara into my eye. I had flashbacks to one of those scare-the-life-out-of-you lectures in 8th grade shop class (I still avoid using powertools whenever possible because of the fear inspired by those lectures) and began to panic. My eye with the glue in it was so uncomfortable that the other eye started to water and as I raced over to the computer to look up what to do I realized that I couldn't see well enough to read. So I called Casey at work. "Hi, do you have a minute?" Yeah. "I've got Superglue in my eye, what should I do?" (stunned silence) "I should call poison control, right?" Yeah. "I can't read the number, can you look it up?" Yeah. So I hang up with Casey thinking I'm blind with my eye glued shut because I didn't bother to tell him otherwise. The guy at Poison Control doesn't ask me for my medical history or put me on hold (as the Ask A Nurse line always does when I call about the kids) before he tells me what to do, but he does inform me that having Superglue in my eye won't poison me. Thanks. Anyway, since my eye is NOT glued shut the procedure is to flush my eye with water for 15 minutes and call him back right away if it feels like some of the glue hardened into granules which can scratch my eye. I realize that this isn't going go to go over well with two 3 year olds, so I explain as simply as I can what's going on to Alex and Chloe, set a timer for 15 minutes and cross my fingers that they don't try any of those things that 3 year old inevitalby do like "look Mom, I can climb to the top of the TV!". After about 30 seconds of flushing my eye it felt like I imagine running sand paper over my eye would feel like, presumably just because I'd washed all the natural lubricants out of my eye. 15 minutes is a long time to hold your head in the sink and contemplate going to the ER with two kids. After a few minutes I get bored and decide to call Casey back with a status update. He says that some website confirms the advice to flush the eye with water for 15 minutes. If he hadn't said that I'd have quit with the water, because really, what could get rinsed out that didn't get rinsed out in the 1st 30 seconds? After the 15 minutes my entire eye is bright red and it hurts uniformly, but I can see, so I decide it is fine and take the kids on the bike ride that we'd been preparing for before I got the glue in my eye. After the bike ride the pain from the flushing has subsided enough that I can feel 2 or 3 granules in my eye so I start to do my own research. http://www.supergluecorp.com/removingsuperglue.html says that the glue bonds to the protein in my eye and granules will come out on their own in a few days and that there are no know cases of anyone losing sight because of Superglue (presumably they'd know because they'd have been sued). Interestingly enough it also says that it is almost impossible to swallow Superglue because it hardens once it touches your saliva and bonds to the inside of your mouth before you could swallow it. Good to know. I think that also means that the glue bonded to my eye well before I began the flushing and the 15 minute water torture was for nothing, but who knows?