Once again I return to scribbling here after too long an absence, this one not caused by neglect or work or the depressive’s blues that I’ve sung fairly regularly in these pages; this time I got myself a genuine physical illness.
I have had, for the past 2+ weeks, what was just diagnosed last Thursday as iritis. As far as the doctors and I can tell to this point, what I have is an acute case–meaning it had a sudden onset and is responding to treatment–and we may never know what, if anything, caused it. There is apparently a very slim chance that it could have happened as a result of years of extended contact lens wear, which would suck if true because I fucking hate wearing glasses…but I’d happily wear Sir Elton’s castoffs from the bad old days for eternity to avoid ever feeling again what I’ve felt in the last few weeks.
There are two things I should disclose to better illustrate what this experience has been like for me. One…I am completely squeamish about my eyes. I’ve worn contacts since I was 15 and putting them and drops into my eyes, myself, is natural to me, but I absolutely cannot stomach anyone else coming near my eyes; nor can I stand to see someone else’s eyes…messed with. I enjoy watching brain surgeries and heart transplants on TV and love a good autopsy, but don’t ever expect me to watch even a quick and bloodless LASIK procedure–reading the brochure makes me nauseous. Since last Monday, my eyes have been examined by six different people, all equipped with their lights and stinging drops that look like hot dog mustard running down your face and their probing fingers holding my eyelids open to keep me from blinking away that damned pressure gauge.
Two…as an adult, I have never been someone who cries as a result of physical pain. Not when I broke my neck, and not after the surgery to pin my spine back together. I didn’t cry when the clueless ER resident shoved a full-sized trach tube into the half-closed incision in my neck without warning or even lidocaine. Those things hurt plenty, but somehow I was just too determined to be Billie Jean Badass to react. This pain, though, pain starting from my inflamed eye, radiating around its socket and throbbing in my brow- and cheekbones, making the whole right side of my face ache, swell, and bruise–this pain has made me weep in a way usually reserved for three-legged puppies, sacrificed soldiers, Out of Africa, and beautifully-constructed paragraphs, and more than once. It made me wake my mom at 3:00 am to make me scalding hot compresses and hold my hand, and I’m not sure which helped more. It kept me on darvocet to the tune of 8 a day, three refills in a week and a half, when I hate narcotics and the spacey stupidity they leave me with, making me unable to string together a complete coherent thought for days at a time.
Thankfully, I seem to finally be getting better. I’ve been on steroid and dilating eye drops since last week, and the handsome new ophthalmologist I saw yesterday (he looked like he was ordered from cuteyoungjewishdoctors.com) prescribed an oral medication to help reduce the remaining inflammation in my eye. The swelling’s going down, the huge bloody spot in the outer corner seems to be fading to a less angry deep pink, and, best of all, I haven’t taken any stupid pills since last night. Maybe I’ve turned the corner.
Hang on. I’m knocking on wood here.
And, now that I’ve conquered one source of pain in my head, time to introduce another.
Game time!
