Tuesday, September 27, 2011

My eye! My eye!!

Let's talk about eyes for a little bit.  Well, first, let me tell you a bit about me.  I consider myself to be pretty tough.  I have had two bouts of kidney stones, one requiring surgery...had three kids through natural childbirth...a bike wreck resulting in a broken leg...pleurisy.  I think I can handle pain fairly well.  I can deal with blood and cuts and stitches and wiggly teeth.  I cannot, however, deal with eyes.  They gross me out.  My beloved eye doc, Dr. Hopper, kindly deals with my phobia.  With his soft, gentle voice and manner, he man handles my head(in a nice way)and puts the drops in...all while handing me a trash can, if I might feel the need to barf.  He doesn't get frustrated when I can't decide if lens one or lens two is better.  He is a saint among men.  Why are you so eye phobic, you ask?  Well, dear reader, I will fill you in on the back story.  Here goes.

As a youngster, I lived in Missouri for about 5 years while my father was a professor and head of the computing center at the University of MO at Columbia.  This fact really has nothing to do with the story, but I am tired and it just happened upon the page.  At the age of 3 or 4, I woke up feeling very ill.  If you want me to be quite frank, I remember throwing up in some Revereware, watching Captain Kangaroo, feverish and with my eye sealed tightly shut.  My apologies to those of you who use the copper bottomed cookware, but that is what I had.  After a chat with the pediatrician, it was decided that I needed to go to the ER for a little visit.  In there, my beloved pediatrician, Dr. Schubert, checked me out under blazing bright lights and let them give me warm blankets to calm my shivers.  Always one to try for the smile from the child, he blew up a rubber glove, drew a face with eyes, nose and a mouth.  He made sure that the one eye was red and told me it was an Indian with his head dress and a bloodshot eye.  I am 39 years old and remember that as if it were yesterday.  That and what happened next when it all went terribly wrong.  See, I have always managed to have prodigious abilities in unenviable areas of my life.  I had gargantuan kidney stones.  Great.  I had a super fast spreading staph infection moving an in an hour up my leg.  Nice.  And, I had an eye infection, the likes of which the doctor had never seen.  Lucky me.  I couldn't be a musical prodigy or a college graduate at 12...of course not.  So, I was then taken to the ophthalmologist, who tried to gather some of the goo from my eye.  When he realized that a crotch kick was in his immediate future, he chose to have me held down while he picked at my eye until he extracted a sufficient amount of yuck.  I was then given many different medications and sent home to recuperate, while my parents probably collapsed in a heap of exhaustion.  So, that probably explains not only my eye issue but also my hatred of having my arms pinned down when in a wrestling match with the kids.

I say this all for one very important reason:  I am no help to anyone in an eye crisis.  Poor, dear Sarah went to see Dr. Hopper today for her contact lens fitting appointment.  She has been waiting for them to come into his office for almost three weeks.  So, when I surprised her with a trip for her fitting, she was thrilled!!  Doc Hopper told me to stay out of the room and he would call if her needed me.  During the course of the next hour, Grace came in and out giving me updates.  "She's crying...or maybe her eyes are just watering."  "She's crying and her eyes are watering."  Finally he called me back to find her in tears.  He explained that she, as the majority did, could not get her eye lids open far enough to get the contact in.  He had gotten it in once and she took it out...but no success for her this time.  He told her to come back in a week after she had practiced opening up her lids.  I felt so helpless and pathetic, feeling sick at my stomach when being told what she needed to do.  As parents, we always want to do what ever we can to help our children.  In that moment, I realized I lacked the ability to help her.  This was a big girl task...one she had to take on all by herself.  She was devastated and was so ashamed of herself.  The girl is way too hard on herself.  I realized at 9, she had already been braver than her mom.  Sure, I've dealt with all of these painful things in my life, but I can't stick a contact lens in there.  I'm so proud of her for trying and I know she will succeed.  Then she'll be able to see and visit me in the home.  God bless us everyone.  

 

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