If You Keep Doing That, You'll Go Blind!
It's come to my attention that I write a lot about the very few times that I've been ill. This is probably because I tend to be ill in luridly dramatic but not particularly serious ways. I fall prey to sitcom diseases, like food poisoning or the flu, which are acceptable to joke about. If I were writing a humorous anecdote about my chemotherapy, you probably wouldn't know whether to say "aww" or laugh.*
One of my earlier illnesses occurred my freshman year in college. I was new to the bizarre world of roommates and even newer to the whole "taking care of myself like a functioning member of society" thing (sometimes I look into my refrigerator, find it full of uneaten carry-out and realize that, over a decade later, I still don't have it completely down). I've mentioned that my roommate that year had a love of scented candles/plug ins/sprays/throw pillows.** The thick odors that swirled through our room only barely covered up the other thing that my roommate apparently loved: poor hygiene.
Our room looked like a battlefield in the rotten-food wars. Leaning towers of plates could be found scattered around the general sink area.*** Virulent yellow-orange EZ-mac clung to some, while ramen noodles drooped listlessly from others, tangling and creating a rat-king of gnarlyness. I cleaned my own dishes but staunchly refused to clean hers.
I was young enough to believe that my stubbornness would eventually win out. I was also young enough that I didn't have a firm grasp on how germs and bacteria work. It turns out, they don't care who creates them, they go after everyone with equal gusto.
At the beginning of the spring semester, the situation turned extreme.
My eyes kind of hurt. Like, all the time. It felt like there were shards of glass in them. I began to suspect that my roommate had been playing with fiberglass over my pillow.
One afternoon, after wearing glasses for a while, I decided to go for a run. I opened my contact lens case on my side of the sink and fished out a lens. It sat on my fingertip so innocently, like a delightfully lubricated little bowl. I plopped it into my eye.
The next thing I knew, I was on my knees on the dorm floor, tears streaming from my face, as the most intense pain I have ever felt blasted through my eye. It felt like someone had taken a razor blade to it. Not just one, like someone took 20 razorblades, covered them with cat hair, burrs, and tobasco, then swiped them around my eye socket.
 |
| This is exactly what it felt like |
After an eternity of pawing at my face, weeping, and begging God to please just make it stop, I wrenched the lens from my eye and stared at it. The lens looked fine. No razors or tobasco anywhere. Because I am an idiot, I decided that probably a new lens was the solution.
After an eternity of pawing at my face, weeping, and begging God to please just make it stop, I wrenched the second lens out of my eye and threw it across the goddamned room.
The situation deteriorated pretty quickly after that, only matched by the growth of my denial. By the end of the week, I couldn't even see using glasses. I'd adjusted my computer so that the text was so big I was literally reading things word-by-word because that's all that would fit on the screen. From the front row in class, I couldn't see a thing. Looking at my textbook didn't help either, I couldn't make out chapter titles, much less text.
Finally, I mentioned to my parents that there was maybe something wrong.
They suggested that, perhaps, a visit to the ophthalmologist was in order. That seemed pretty alarmist to me. A visit to the doctor? I mean, probably everyone goes mysteriously and painfully semi-blind on occasion. It's like a coming of age thing. You grow hair new places, feel funny around boys and then lose your vision. Perfectly normal.
However, since this whole vision thing was causing me to fail exams (BECAUSE I COULDN'T SEE THEM) I relented and visited the Dr.
My ophthalmologist was roughly 85 years old. This isn't an exaggeration, he was amazingly old. He had seen a lot in his career. One view of my eyes had him calling everyone in the office in to look through the scope because it was "so gross." My corneas were bubbling.
Let me say this again. My cornea. Was. BUBBLING.
It turns out, I had fusarium keratitis--ages before B&L started giving it to everyone with their contact lens solution. I guess that the rotten food farm that my roommate created had also provided a wonderful fungal breeding ground of grodyness. Fusarium was eating my corneas, causing them to do all manner of weird stuff. Like bubble. And amass gobs of scar tissue.
With the aid of medicinal eye drops and time, my vision was somewhat saved. However, I still have ghost vessels--left over from when they were needed to heal the scar tissue. Doesn't that sound awesome? My eyes are haunted by ghosts of blood vessels past.
*Note: I don't actually have chemotherapy...that was an example. Now I hope I don't get cancer as some sort of karmic retribution for making light of chemo.
**I typed "scentrid" about three times...my brain created a new combination of "scented" and "putrid"
***By "general sink area" I mean "front half of the room"
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