The Eyes Have It

My church has a coffee hour after the 8:30 am service on Sundays. This past Sunday, I met up with my friend Wendy after we dropped the kids off at their respective Sunday school classrooms. It is such a pleasant atmosphere with the cafe set up in the multi-purpose room. As we were catching up, I felt a spasm in my right eye. It was exactly 9:45 am when this happened. I know this because it was such a strange sensation as I glanced at my watch only to see a "halo" ... really!! ... around my watch face. Hmmm. I tried to focus in on one of the lights in the room. Same thing ... a halo was around the light. Strange, but I wasn't in the least alarmed. I figured it was my eye make up that was irritating my eye. As soon as Sunday school was over, My son, Clay, and I went home. Once home, I proceeded to remove my eye make up, rinse my eye, and put a few drops of an allergy eye drop in my eye. None of my home remedies seemed to alleviate this vision problem. What to do?

Of course, the only real solution was to search the internet for possible causes of the halo effect. Not such a good idea. I found that I could possibly have a detached retina, or scratched my cornea, or was actually on my way to blindness. None of these sounded good ... undoubtedly for a hypochondriac such as myself, these descriptions were down right frightening!

I promptly contacted my brother-in-law, Charles. He's a pediatric ophthalmologist. I had a hunch he might know what might going on with my troubled eye. Charles recommended that I immediately contact a local ophthamologist ... as Charles resides out of state. He gave me very specific words to use in order to be seen right away. Now, I was alarmed. Not too many details were shared other than he said certain ailments (well he said things, but I clearly heard ailments!) had to be ruled out.

I was on the phone first thing Monday morning. Luckily, I was able to get in Tuesday morning at 8:30 am. I endured a 3-hour ordeal. I sat in the waiting room for an hour. After being called back, one of the technicians needed to numb my eyes so she could place a huge instrument, okay a tiny little instrument, but it seemed huge to me in to my eye. Well, I wasn't going to have it! No way! Not me! The office manager came in to tell me I was being a bad girl and needed to cooperate! I politely told her I was scary squeamish about my eyes as I was feeling the numbing effects on my eyes. Why did my eyes weigh 20 lbs. each now? Ugh! They would let me slide on this one ... for now. Fortunately for me, I found out that I was in need of reading glasses during the next test. However, my luck was running out. On to the next room of horrors! The tech explained that she needed to numb me AGAIN!?! Was that really necessary, I asked. And, why would I need numbing. Another enormous machine in need of contact with my eyes. She promised it wouldn't hurt. I didn't care if it hurt, I didn't want it touching my eye. She repeated this numerous times ... no pain involved. I would gladly take the pain if she would agree NOT TO TOUCH MY EYES! No such luck. I was hysterically whining and crying. So much so, my new friend, the office manager, had to come back in to admonish me. I explained that I would not be allowing any eye contact whatsoever, and that I really didn't think I had a problem any more. I'm not sure I convinced them of my miraculous recovery. I swear there were wrestling moves used on me in order to secure an accurate test. Some how or another, I actually survived. They left me shaking and muttering in the second waiting room where I was the youngest patient by 30 years. I was the center of attention in this waiting room, not because I was younger ... and prettier ... and sweeter ... but because I was panic stricken!

The doctor was the next one to see me. He seemed nice at first until he wanted to put dye in my right eye and take a closer look. Ummmm .... he was going to touch my eye. Again, I needed to remain calm. The doctor's assistant had a FIRM hand on the back of my head to keep it in place so the doctor could shine an excrutiatingly bright light in to my eye for an eternity! Ouch! More crying ... wish they had told me that the dye mixed with my tears and left nasty camo-looking stains on the right side of my face. Nice! Doc says I have cornea erosion. When I was speaking with my sister a little later in the day, she asked if that was right. Maybe, an abrasion on my cornea? How would I know? I was not listening clearly because I was still re-living the atrociousness of my morning. My doctor recommended a cornea specialist since my cornea is swollen. Did I have a blow to my eye recently? Or maybe my mascara wand was the culprit? Stuck my finger in my eye? None of the peculiar incidents happened. I'm calmly putting four drops of a steroidal drop in my right eye a day. I'm seriously not ready to relive such misadventure again. This cornea specialist better not have any expectations about touching my eye in any way, shape, or form.