Monday, March 03, 2008
Sicko
Yesterday when I woke up my right eye was about three sizes too large and I looked like Quasimodo (admittedly the cuter Disney version, but still no looker). The saga had actually begun the night before when a failed attempt at wearing my contacts led to an evening full of burning and itching in which I eventually just put on sunglasses and pretended I was Stevie Wonder. But I followed my traditional medical plan of just ignoring it to see if it would go away, and simply went to bed looking like I had suffered an ocular burst. When the Hunchback climbed out of my bed the next morning, I figured it was time to see a doctor.
Of course, no eye doctor in the history of time has ever worked a Sunday morning, so I ended up in the ER, sitting on a gurney next to a man with a huge slice of glass in his hand. (And if you think I was angry about the three and a half hour wait, you should have seen him.) After being poked and prodded and stared at by a whole cavalcade of doctors, as well as having a veritable periodic table of chemicals poured into my eyes, I was told I have conjunctivitis. All I need to do is use some eye drops for a week and it will go away.
Kind of an uneventful end to my day of squinting and crying, but certainly enough to convince me to never, ever get sick again. Or at least if I do to instead consult my neighborhood Shaman.
Yesterday when I woke up my right eye was about three sizes too large and I looked like Quasimodo (admittedly the cuter Disney version, but still no looker). The saga had actually begun the night before when a failed attempt at wearing my contacts led to an evening full of burning and itching in which I eventually just put on sunglasses and pretended I was Stevie Wonder. But I followed my traditional medical plan of just ignoring it to see if it would go away, and simply went to bed looking like I had suffered an ocular burst. When the Hunchback climbed out of my bed the next morning, I figured it was time to see a doctor.
Of course, no eye doctor in the history of time has ever worked a Sunday morning, so I ended up in the ER, sitting on a gurney next to a man with a huge slice of glass in his hand. (And if you think I was angry about the three and a half hour wait, you should have seen him.) After being poked and prodded and stared at by a whole cavalcade of doctors, as well as having a veritable periodic table of chemicals poured into my eyes, I was told I have conjunctivitis. All I need to do is use some eye drops for a week and it will go away.
Kind of an uneventful end to my day of squinting and crying, but certainly enough to convince me to never, ever get sick again. Or at least if I do to instead consult my neighborhood Shaman.
