*image credit to leadershipfreak.blog

 

I want to say thank-you so very, very much to everyone who left a message of support and sympathy on my last post. There were too many for me to answer them all. Which is to say, I’m overwhelmed by your caring and generous spirit. Thank-you. I’m not sure I deserve ya’ll but I’m keeping you anyway.

 

Also wanted to say: I followed the nearly unanimous demand, request, advice and wet to an ophthalmologist. Yes today. I can be very pushy when I need to be. I called five places in a row before I found one that would give me an appointment today. When I called Number Five they said they could see me “at 3 pm” (which was in 75 minutes in Jenn Standard Time Zone) and if not, then in two weeks. I told the lady on the phone I’ll be there by three. So I raced across town, got lost in the medical center parking garage, went to the wrong building, found the right building but got in the elevator before figuring out that my new doctor was on the ground floor. All of that is pretty standard fare for me when I need to go downtown by the way. And even so I managed to not be late to my appointment.

When I was finally sitting in that funny looking chair with my chin propped on the bar trying to look directly at the burning beam of light, the doctor actually said “Oh wow that is severe dry eye!”. Then he wanted the name of my optometrist because he said no decent eye professional should have turned me away with just a “there, there”. I told him my eyes ache all the time. He said “Well yeah”.

But it is just dry eye and while that does not make me magically better (I still can hardly see this computer screen) its a relief to have a competent doctor type explain what the problem is. I had big scary thoughts that included everything from retinal degeneration to optic atrophy.

Then my competent doctor played around with his gizmos and fried my poor eyes out with those super bright lights. When he’d had enough of that he numbed out my eyeballs and dropped some yellow dye in there to see how it spread around (or something I didn’t really understand it all). Now I have eyelids that feel like pillows and I look like I have a case of terminal jaundice. But its temporary (I was faithfully been promised that I’ll look normal in a few hours). I have prescription drops to pick up tomorrow and freebie drops to get me through tonight. And in three weeks if things are not better I have to go back and “get plugs put into those tear ducts” to open them up. I shudder just thinking about it but if I need it, I’ll do it.

So I just have to tough out the next three weeks. Then I’ll go in and have my tear ducts roto-rootered. (insert fear spasm here) And there is a slight chance that these new drops will erase a year’s worth of deteriorating eyesight. I’m not counting on that because after all this, it seems too easy. In the mean time I’m sticking with my fish oils and eye vitamins and stock piling sport drinks.

Thank-you again for your love and support and your collective kick in the ass. I need to go put my new drops in these monster-yellow eyes of mine. Then I’m crashing.

Boy do my eyes hurt right now.