When I was in my late teens (quite some time ago) I had a friend who was know as a bit of an Action Man, he would be the one that spent his weekend rock climbing and absailing, his evenings running or cycling, he was a great great guy but never ever sat still for a moment, the upside of all this fitness and activity was that he had the most amazing toned body, it was probably the first sixpack I'd ever come into close contact with. He also used to run around most of the time bare foot.
A group of us went away for a week on a camping trip; I'm a dab hand at putting up tents and making a 3 course dinner for 12 in 2 billy cans over an open fire. It wasn't a big commercial site, but a famers field in the middle of no where (that belonged to someone's uncle) There was a portaloo and we made our own shower unit, all be it with fresh cold welsh mountain water!
On our second night we were just all getting ready for bed and we heard the most almighty cry of pain, it turns out that as Action Man had been taking his contacts out one of them had ripped through the eyeball. He some how managed to take the other contact lens out and that did the same.
We were in a tiny village in North Wales but they did have a GP living there (these days however probably not) so we guided Action Man into one of the cars and got him down there, the GP took him to the nearest hospital with one of the guys following behind in his car.
The next morning he was released from hospital, it turns out that his contact lenses (hard ones in those days) had not had their edges filed/smoothed down, so of course when he lifted them out they sliced his eyeball.
Of course we offered to cut short the trip for either all of us or one of us would drive him home (we were aged between 17 and 21) but he wouldn't have it.
For the rest of the week, he was a completely different person, his eyes were heavily taped shut to give them time to heal (they did with no lasting damage) and he was unable to fulfill his usual role of gathering firewood and hunting wild deer (ok I made that last bit up, he didn't usually catch many).
Instead he sat around and talked and talked and talked, we all took it in turns to be with him, obviously as we were camping in the middle of no where there was a limit to how much he could do for himself, but he did as much as was humanly possible.
He went (in all our opinion) from being Action Man to being the most thoughtful and interesting person there, all of us sat with him at one time or other and had long talks for hours and hours about important things, about life the world and the universe. Instead of running around camp being practical he became the focus, the heart of the camp the one that we would go to to talk about problems and worries.
After 5 days the bandages were removed, his eyes slowly recovered but to this day he says it was the best thing that ever happened to him, he HAD to communicate with us, he HAD to sit by and listen to the frustration of someone else trying to do a job that he could do easily himself and most importantly he had to talk and listen to the people around him who care for him.
He was a fantastic boy before it happened, but he became a wonderful man afterwards.
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