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LAKE FOREST, Calif. — Bestselling author Pastor Rick Warren is recovering at home after a gardening accident caused serious burns—and pain—to his eyes. After his wife, Kay, called paramedics, Warren was treated at Mission Hospital and released the following day. Earlier reports that he was blinded were not true, he said.
According to Warren, he was wearing gloves while trimming a large African firestick plant at his home on Monday.
“I somehow later accidentally got some of the toxic sap on my hands and then in my eyes,” Warren, pastor of Saddleback megachurch, wrote on his blog July 22, three days after the incident. “The resin is quite corrosive and burned both of my eyes. [While I was] in excruciating pain, Kay called 911 paramedics who rushed me to a hospital.”
According to his publicist, the injury was so painful the pastor could not explain to his wife what had happened, prompting her to call paramedics. Baptist Press reported that Warren described the pain as a 12 on the 1-through-10 pain scale.
“For the next four hours, doctors irrigated my blistered eyes with 14 liters of saline solution to flush out the poison and ease the pain,” Warren wrote on his blog. “ I’d have to say, I had no idea that eye burns are so painful.’
In the midst of the burning, however, the pastor pointed his readers to the Lord.
“May God use this pain for His Glory,” Warren wrote, citing Romans 8:28.
Doctors, including an eye specialist, kept him overnight to treat both the pain and eyes with medication. He was given special contacts that are used by patients who have just undergone corrective Lasik eye surgery
“A doctor inserted protective contact lenses to aid in healing the scarred tissue,” the pastor wrote. “He told me he expects a full recovery of my vision and each day it has improved.”
Although the incident impacted his vision, Warren said rumors began to swirl that he was blinded by the accident after he asked for prayers on his blog.
“I am not blind!—which should be obvious from me typing this note,” Warren, who wrote the mega hit “Purpose Driven Life,” wrote.
The damage was reported to be to his corneas, which can heal themselves over time. Warren, who is working on the church’s fall curriculum, has not been on a preaching schedule, which will allow more time for healing, his publicist said.
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