Tuesday Was Awful

Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time, I was afraid. I was legitimately terrified. I was terrified of losing my one, functioning eye, thus rendering me completely blind.

Since my 9th grade year or so, I only had the one functioning eye, and it doesn't function that well, I'd say between 35 and 45 percent. This is because of a large quantity of scar tissue on my retina left over from the half dozen plus eye surgeries I had over the course of 1995 and 1996. These half dozen plus surgeries were to reattach both my retinas which had become detached while I was on my high school football team*. As a result, my night vision is almost non-existent, I have no depth perception whatsoever, what is well-lit for you is dim for me, and what is dim for you is basically pitch black for me. Combine the sports angle with the eyesight situation and you'll begin to understand why sports bars are, literally, hell for me.

And, I've had a few folks try to "see what it's like" by merely closing one eye. That doesn't work. You'd have to close one eye, retard the rate at which your pupil dilates and then disrupt and distort your vision with a constantly-shifting blob of color (the scar tissue) filling up most of your upper left quadrant and patches of your other three quadrants of vision.

Just saying.

So, why was I actively concerned about losing my remaining, shitty eyesight?

You ever get a eyelash in your eye?

You ever rub your eye?

Well, when angles and pressure and Satan's prankishness are all juuust right, you can rub an eyelash RIGHT INTO YOUR EYE. The white part of your eye is called the sclera and I got an eyelash embedded in my sclera. No, it didn't hurt, but the idea of something penetrating the delicate membrane of my eye...ugh, shudder. Incidentally, this is why you should have deep eye contact with someone special every day, it strengthens the relationship and they can see if you have any foreign bodies puncturing your eyeballs.

Anyway, how does one remove an eyelash which has been lodged in one's sclera? It's pretty motherfucking, goddamn, horrifically terrible friends; the eye doctor, hopefully with the rock solid hands of Roland Deschain of Gilead, puts numbing drops in your eye and then uses an instrument to remove it. A tweezers if you're lucky, a scalpel and a tweezers if you're not. The worst part for anyone else is having to keep your eye open and motionless while a series of metal instruments draw near, touch and then sort of distort your vision (that's the instrument piercing the surface of your eye and slightly altering its shape). For me, throw in the fact that, if something goes wrong, I could lose my remaining sight. 

So while I'm trying to sit as still as possible, hold my eye open despite EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING AND THE SCREAMING COMING FROM MY MIND TO GET AWAY FROM THE BLADE ABOUT TO CUT MY EYE and not sob in terror (both because that would shake my body and because I am an ugly, ugly crier) some things flashed through my head. 

What were the last things I remember seeing? 

The last movie was Deadpool, and, while not a fantastic film, I felt it could be a fitting last one for me. 

The last non-Braille book was "Vampire L.A." by Phil Tucker (seriously, Phil: 100% enjoying it now that I'm 3/4 into it).

Last VO gig was AirWick.

The last concert, They Might Be Giants (or, kind of, Mother Feather, if you count the dozens of times I saw them perform "Living/Breathing" last weekend), fine with both of those.

The eyelash, which had broken into two pieces, came out all right and, as of right now, things are okay. I'm taking a course of antibiotic eye drops and I have a follow up on Friday, and another in a week or so after that, but now (and for a while probably), I'm afraid to go to the gym (sweat and/or pool water probably not helpful), keep my eye open (dust!), keep my eye closed (more bastard fucking eyelashes), pet the cat (dander, whatever that is), sneeze (sudden pressure shift), read (bit of a hinderance when that's technically my job), shit (muscle strain), utilize anything with a screen (reduced blinking results in dry eyes results in my eye turning to glass and shattering probably) and so on.

So...that's where I'm at.

* peer pressure, Florida, etc.