2006-10-04

what's the (vegetable) matter with your eye?

Monday evening while reading some blog posts and trying to think up one of my own (there's my first problem right there), my right eye started bugging me. I rubbed it and continued working, or not working, as it were. After semi-consciously rubbing my eye a few more times, I concluded that I might have a case of pinkeye so I went upstairs and looked. The eye wasn't pink. I slept well and woke up with lots of eye cookies (or sleepy seeds as my wife has always called them). Now the eye was pink and it itched constantly.

Later in the day as they eye kept on bothering me I took a closer look. There was something in there! I tried rubbing it but the plainly visible dark spot on my eye didn't budge. I shined a flashlight on it and it spoke my name... no, not really, but I was concerned at having a stationary black spot on my cornea. As the evening wore on the spot also wore on the inside of my eyelid. By the time I went to bed last night I was experiencing what has to be called pain; mild to be sure but very irritating.

I called the doctor this morning and count myself fortunate to have scored an appointment for an hour hence. The doctor said, "you'll need to see an opthalmologist." The office across the street said they could see me right away. They tested my vision in the affected eye and, as has been the case with every eye exam I've ever had, the attendant was amazed that I could read even the smallest letters without any effort at all. I've never had glasses but both my parents wear them now, so I know it's only a matter of time. For now, though, at least the offending spot wasn't hurting my vision.

The Opthalmologist himself took one close look at the spot and said, "It's vegetable matter. It's not metallic."

"Whatever it is, I'd rather it were not in my eye just at this moment." No, I didn't really say that, but I wanted to.

It took him approximately 5 minutes to anesthetize my eyes with some drops and "test the pressure in the other eye just to be sure" (a mysterious statement of equally mysterious meaning). Numb eyes feel very odd, as if they are bone dry. It then took him approximately .87 seconds to remove the offending vegatable matter that was not metallic.

He sent me packing with a prescription for some antibiotics just to insure against infection. It took me another hour and half to get the prescription because I didn't have the right card the first time and then, when I returned to the store after retrieving the correct card from deep, deep, deep within a file drawer in my home office, the very pleasant CVS worker could not get her register to work, then could not get a second register to work.

Everything's alright now, though. I've even figured out how to work the outlets at this Panera in Reading, PA.



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