One evening two years ago, while blowing my wet hair with a hair dryer, I accidentally dropped my hairbrush and somehow its wooden handle tip hit my left eyelid. I felt pain instantly and my vision was blurred. In the middle of that night, I woke up feeling the pain again. At 7.30 am, my eye was red and tearing. I quickly made my way to an ophthalmologist.

I had a big scratch on my left cornea. The ophthalmologist put a bandage lens in. It took two days to heal. I had to keep my eye dry and use an antibiotic eyedrop to prevent infection. I had to be careful how I wiped my tears and excess eyedrop so that I would not get an infection. By the third day, there was no more sign of the scratch, only minute ‘holes’ from it. I kept my eye dry for two more days, applied more eyedrops and an eye gel for one week to prevent a possible recurrent tear.

To keep my eye dry for that period, I had to use dry shampoo to clean my hair and could only clean half of my face while I ‘dry cleaned’ the left side. At one point, I laid in bed with my eyes closed for two hours, only to wake up feeling the sharp pain when I opened them. At different times, due to various eyedrops, things looked either dimmer or hazier. It was hard to make out medication instructions and handphone text messages. To ensure complete recovery, I stayed homebound. Besides the pain and discomfort, the whole episode was very troublesome; doing things became so inconvenient and restrictive – all because of one miniscule scratch, invisible to the naked eye.

I learnt afresh how “when one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26). One small part of the body is still significant to the rest.