What It's Like to Be Blind (Sort of) Part II

After the nice doctor finished sewing up my eye-lid, everything was fine, until it wasn't.

Not long after the doctor left, and at this point it was after one in the morning, I dissolved into tears. The nurse said I could take my time, offered me juice and cookies, and I'm not sure she didn't offer me a part of her own sandwich. I drank the juice, ate a stale cookie, and waited to feel better. I had started crying because I was emotionally tired after a trauma. Then, as I sat on the end of the surgery bed gripping a pillow, I realized I was crying because of pain. I kept waiting for it to get better and go away so I could stand up, walk out and leave, but that was not happening. My sobbing turned into gasps of pain. After about fifteen minutes of this, me still thinking maybe this will just resolve itself, I hear a nurse (not mine) say, "Should we help her?"

The ER doctor (not the ophthalmologist) returned, asked me to open my eye, and told me the sutures were causing irritation against the eye itself. (Which is why I was continuing to cry and gasp and sob like a frightened child.) They, God bless them, numbed my eye completely so I could stand upright and function. Before long half my face and scalp were numb too. However, the night was not finished. I still had to go to the Pharmacist.

So. It was now after 2AM, I had my car with me, my roommates were away, and it was imperative I pick up the medication that night instead of the next day in order for me to be capable or productive in any way at all, instead of overcome with debilitating pain. I found an open Wal-Greens with a 24-hour pharmacy around 3:00. As luck would have it, she, the pharmacist, had just taken her half-hour lunch.  I sat, waiting in the Wal-Greens, exhausted and praying the numbing agent wouldn't wear off before I received the medicines and drove myself home where I could take the blessed codone. Three-thirty came, prescription filled, and I drove home reciting my name and home address at the top of my lungs so I wouldn't fall asleep.

Finally: What's it like to be temporarily blind.
The next morning, it wasn't that my vision was harmed, but using my eyes became next to impossible because of the discomfort of manipulating either eye-lid (even opening my un-injured eye caused a reaction). For four days I wandered around the house, reaching with my hands outstretched for the wall, the couch arm, the counter-top, the door-knob. Walking carefully, trying to memorize the layout of the floor, how when walking this straight line from the living room to the kitchen I should bump into the space heater here, or if I'm too far over, the desk here, so I know I'm facing the right direction. At one point I remember trying to reach for the wall in my bedroom, carefully stepping and stepping, but still not making contact, and beginning to feel scared and incapable: I could get lost inside a single, tiny room. My own room. Then I turned my shoulders 90 degrees and found the reason I couldn't locate the wall was because I was reaching arm to the side, while standing parallel. I was six-inches away. I felt foolish and as if there was a giant, dark and looming wave of utter helplessness about to crash on top of me.

The big excursion of the week was my roommate, Randal, taking me to the convenience store so I could buy milk and cereal, food I thought I could handle without seeing it. I stepped out the back door and dragged my feet along the ground like an old woman, trying to feel the concrete and stones and not trip.

"I would help you, but it's just so funny to watch."
Randal let me take his arm to walk inside the store. "It's okay, you can walk normally."
"Where's your credit card?" "Stand right here, don't move, I'm getting the milk."
He's a nice guy.

On the fifth day I was able to open my other eye for at least brief periods of time.
Yesterday was my check-up with the nice Yiddish-speaking ophthamologist. I am pleased to report my vision is again 20/20 with glasses, and you can barely see the scar. I will say it feels funny in the shower when the water runs down my face, because now the water follows a different path over my skin. And sometimes I'm there is an itch right at the scar tissue, but I it may be only  my imagination.

Also, for those who care to know, the Great State of California has the best Worker's Comp laws in the country, Thank-you-God.

What It's Like to Be Blind Part I: The Water-Rocket Incident (aka How It Happened)

Now, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I am not blind.

However, as most of you are not aware, I did experience an accident about a month ago, early December, wherein I lacerated my eye-lid, effectively blinding me for the better part of a week. 

I currently work teaching science lessons to children as a part of an after-school program here in L.A. On this particular day, I was teaching a special event, a Saturday party for a local soccer team and their parents. In addition to after-school lessons, we also provide entertaining science demos fun kids and parents alike. Wink. The event was held out-doors and it was a beautiful day in sunny Southern California. I had already finished our experiments involving dry-ice, "Say it with me now, Sub-li-mate!" I had wafted the cold fog (dry-ice + water)  over the children seated on the ground, made dry-ice soap bubbles you can catch with your hands, and shot some very cold water into children's faces (and my own). The kids were excited, all was well, and next up: Rockets!  

First, an electrical-circuit ignition rocket, which is exactly what it sounds like: you connect the wires from the bottom of the rocket to remote control, and when you press the button, "Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six...!" the circuit closes and the electrical current starts the ignition in the rocket. The children thought this was just incredible and ran across the field with a chorus of, "Yaaaay!" to catch the rocket as it came back down to Earth. 

"What should we do now, children? DO IT AGAIN!" 

"YAAAAYY!" So we did it again. 

Then, injury impending, I set up the water-bottle rockets. A water-bottle rocket is a pretty simple apparatus where you have a stand made of PVC pipe, and you take a 2-liter soda bottle, put some water  in it, plug it, and then pump it full of air until the pressure is so great the bottle flies off the stand, fifty feet into the air, spraying water everywhere. To put it simply, I was a thoughtless idiot in this particular moment. We pump the bottle full of air via a bicycle pump. You are supposed to have about fifteen to twenty feet between you and the rocket while you vigorously pump the bicycle hose. I was standing about two feet away. The children, who were counting the number of pumps it would take, reached Sixteen when the rocket lifted off, and I understood in a moment of dreadful realization and anguish-filled resignation, I was standing far too close, without goggles. My eye closed in fight/flight response while my brain made one conscious plea to God and the universe, "No!" 

Of course, it was too late. The plastic soda bottle, meant to shoot fifty-feet up, hit my face and bounced to the ground. I immediately turned around and grabbed a paper-towel to cover my eye so the kids wouldn't be able to see my face. 

In the aftermath that ensued, many very kind and caring parents helped me to hand out slime to the kids and load all of my equipment into the trunk of my car. A woman with medical expertise came up and looked at my eye, told me the eye-lid was cut, and "Go to a hospital, really. Go to a hospital." 

Beautiful photo of my face waiting in the ER. If you look closely, you can see the red line that was the laceration on the interior of the lid. Some nice bruising down the cheek bone as well. 

Before long I drove myself to the ER. My right eye-lid was lacerated, meaning cut, slit open so that the ER doctor called the on-call ophthalmologist so around midnight I was laying on a surgery bed with a very nice doctor with a Yiddish accent sewing my eye-lid back together.