panic

I wake up from one of my frequent night terrors and, Holy God, my right eye is burning like crazy. I check the clock - it's a little blurry, says 0430. I feel like I have several eyelashes stuck in my eye so I try to rub them out - no dice. I get out of my comfy cozy bed go to the bathroom, pull out my 10x magnifying makeup mirror and begin searching for the offending eyelash. Nothing - a very red, very angry looking eye stares back at me accusingly, but there is nothing there. Hm. Perhaps I just poked it in my sleep and now it is irritated. I find Visine in my medicine cabinet, put it in and almost drop to the floor - it's worse! Stinging, burning and altogether uncomfortable. I go to read the date on the Visine bottle - perhaps it is expired? And then I notice that I can't focus. I mean, yes, the tears are blurring my vision, but I can't actually get my left eye to focus.

Panic.

OhMyGod, my retina has detached and I'm home alone and there' s nothing I can do about it, so I call my eye doctor and leave a frantic message on their machine and then I call my dad (yes, at 0435) and tell him "Dad, I can't see properly! I think my eye is completely messed up! I need to go to the doctor but I can't drive there!" He talks me off the ledge (what time does the optometrist open? we'll go there first thing, just go back to sleep now, rest your eye) and I put first a heated towel and then a cool towel on my eye and fall back asleep until 0640, when dad calls back to see how I'm doing and if I want to get picked up now and I tell him I feel little better, looking over at the bookshelf and happy as hell that I can read with spines with both eyes, so I'll go to the optometrist myself, no worries, Daddy and he said to keep him posted.

Fast forward to 1100, in the doctor's office, I hear him tell his daughter (in school for optometry at the University of Waterloo) all about my eyes and how interesting all the scarring is. Scarring? I think. Yes, he sees the laser lines from my eye surgery four years ago, but also "spots" where my cornea has re-ripped. …what. the. fuck. He must have seen my apprehension, and he tries to make me feel better by saying "don't worry, your eyelid just grazes your cornea a little too close to the pupil, that's why you couldn't focus at first. it will heal." Not. Helping. "It happens to a lot of people, and this is an old injury. You probably just opened your eye a little too quickly and your eyelid caught the cornea. Here are some drops - they'll help."

So, no retinal detachment (my living nightmare) - just a "bionic" eyelid that has it in for my eye… how's that for self-destructive tendencies?