All the Billion Other Moments

You may be wondering where I’ve been. Ok, probably not, but
leave me my illusions.

It’s a long one, so read on if you want to know

A few weeks ago, I woke up, went down stairs, logged into work
and began reading my email. I soon noticed that I couldn’t. Why?
Because I was seeing three of everything. After a few minutes I
realized that my right eye wouldn’t focus. I took off my glasses
and tried to read something up close (I don’t were glasses to
read), but that didn’t seem to work either. I tried flushing my eye
with water. I tried ignoring it. No good! I was going blind!

I remained calm, and called the free dial-a-nurse provided by my
insurance (one of the only things left that no longer costs me an
arm and a leg I might add). I explained that I woke up and my eye
would not focus.

“Did you get hit in the eye?”

“No”

“Did you hit your head?”

“No”

“That’s not good. Go to the emergency room.”

So after trying a number of people, my grandfather drove up to
take me to the ER (thanks Grampy). No one was there when I arrived
so I was registered right away. Thats when everyone in the area had
an emergency. I sat in the waiting room trying not to look at
anything, because by now it hurt to try to focus. An hour or so
later, I was called in.

Everyone seemed greatly amused by my problem, but that could be
my fault. I kept a good humor about it, and tried not to be
worried. After all, the worst that could be happening was I was
going blind, and what good would worrying have done about that? The
ER could find nothing wrong and they referred me to an eye
doctor.

Home I went, and then right back out to the eye doctor (thanks
again Grampy). After many more tests, they just gave me an eye
exam. My prescription was wrong. Either my eye changed drastically
overnight (unlikely) or I had been wearing the wrong prescription
for over a year. My eyes had compensated until they just plain gave
up. I ordered new glasses and spent the rest of the day in complete
darkness to let my eyes rest up.

Two weeks later, I had new glasses and was all set.

Last Thursday I came downstairs, logged into work, read my email
with my new eyes. When I got up to eat breakfast I collapsed to the
floor in pain. My back was not right. I had been having back pain
on and off for some time, but this was new. I could not get up for
some time.

Apparently I have a weak back muscle causing my spine to come
out of alignment, which in turn in causing other issues, and that
leads to pain. I’ll start physical therapy on Thursday. I’m
supposed to stop taking the pain killers today, so we’ll see how I
feel tomorrow.

All of this happens while I’m really trying to make a strong
effort to write 700+ words a day on my book, and just after my
insurance turned in to a mere shadow of it’s former self. It’s a
new ‘fairer’ version where it costs more to do everything except
have the insurance itself. This only penalizes those who actually
use the insurance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 at 10:52 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.