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.
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