severe infection and corneal abrasion from organic matter in child eye for 2 weeks

Question
My 14 year old son ran thru a bush and complained he had a piece of a stick in his eye. We took him next day to Ophthalmologist who said he was fine after 2 visits to the same doctor and numerous phone calls, I demanded he re examine my son that his eye was severely inflamed and in pain and my son was having a mental breakdown from the pain. We believed the md that the symptoms were due to him rubbing his eye and that nothing was in it. Finally, they examined him 2 weeks later for the third time and noticed a severe infection and corneal abrasion and looked under lid and found a piece of a branch that was about 1 " long (yes, unbelievable). they are treating him with eye drops every 1 hour, then day 2 every 2 hours, now on day 3 every 4 hours. I am very concerned, they are seeing him every day to follow him (they realize their mistake). They are holding off for 3 more days before starting steroids but they keep telling me not to worry he wont have any scarring and everything will heal in a few days. I need some advice, should I be concerned that an organic matter has been in his eye for 2 weeks and his eye looks really bad for 15 days now, with severe light sensitivity, redness, drainage. I need advice, help


Answer
I am so sorry that you and your son had to go through this experience.  I know the pain he suffered was severe.  The cornea has many, many nerve endings just under the top layer of cells.  Once that top layer is abraded, the pain can be intolerable.  



The good news is that the human eye is amazing in its ability to heal from some unbelievable insults.  I cannot say whether your son's eye will scar from this injury without seeing him.  It depends how deep the abrasion was.  You can take comfort that if they are seeing him every day, AND they are backing off on the drop schedule, it must be because they are seeing some improvement - the infection most likely is healing and the abrasion is most likely resolving.  When the abrasion is sufficiently healed they will start steroids and the light sensitivity, redness and drainage should clear up fairly well, again depending upon the extent of the injury, which I cannot assess from here.  



I don't know what drops they are using so I also cannot say how worried you should be about the organic matter having been in your son's eye for so long.  The risk there is for fungal infection.  Did they tell you what kind of infection he had (bacterial versus fungal?)  Was there any talk of using an oral medication to further fight the infection?  You can ask them this when you see them tomorrow but most likely, if they did not prescribe an oral medication, they must feel the infection is controllable with just drops.  And again, if they are backing off the drops, they must be seeing improvement.  



I would bet that within another week, your son will be doing much better.  The fact that the doctor did not see the branch at the first visit at least tells me the abrasion is most likely not in what we call the visual axis.  Even if a scar does result, it will most likely not affect his visual acuity.