Good morning, and I am back
at my usual perch!
I will get back to that in a moment, but just let me do what I have to do here first.
It is Friday, July 2, and we are officially at “hump day” for the year, as today is the 183rd day of 2021.
We are at the beginning of the July 4 weekend, and it will hopefully be a good one.
But for me, I have reached the true crossroads of my life.
Let me explain.
Last Saturday, while pumping gas at a local station, without any warning at all, I began to see things in my left eye that I had never seen before.
It looked like worms in my eye, and I thought that there might have been a bug in there, but this almost psychedelic sensation lasted about five minutes as I got home, worried, and I was as scared as I have ever been in my entire life.
I went into the bedroom, hoping that the sensation would go away, and it did … but it kind of morphed in one small, round spot that moved from one side of the eye to another, as if I was watching a baseball being hit over the fence for a home run on TV.
That sensation lasted about two munities, and when it went away, I was left with two squiggly, ever-moving lines in my eye, as if I had an eye lash or two stuck in the eye.
As all this was happening, I called my eye doctor, who suggested that I call the specialists that I normally go to and where I see my retinologist every few months. He felt they could serve me better, since several years ago they actually saved that eye after a “rogue” vein was growing into the iris of the eye.
Anyway, I could only make an appointment for the coming Monday, which I did, and that was that …
Or so I thought.
I found that even with the squigglies in my eye, I could do just about everything I had been doing, including driving, watching TV, etc. I could still see, but I had these two things in my eye, which had pretty much set themselves at the top of the left eye.
I went out and did what I always do on Saturday evening, which is bring in dinner for my family. The lines were still there, but I could see pretty clearly and I could drive, and I did just that.
I got home with the food, we began to eat, and about 20 minutes into our meal, I felt something in my mouth that was kind of funny, and lo and behold, one of my crowns came off tone of my back teeth.
Luckily, I was able to retrieve it, and I put it in a baggie so I could have it hopefully put back in my mouth.
But it was just Saturday, I had to go to the eye specialist on Monday, so I was going to have to wait a few days for the tooth to be fixed.
I took it pretty easy on Sunday, and on Monday morning, my wife and I went to the specialist to look at my eye.
I had a myriad of tests, and then my doctor emerged from the ether, looked at my eye, and told me point blank, “You aren’t going to like this, but you need laser surgery.”
Yup, just like that, and then he exited the room, saying little else to me.
He did not tell me what was wrong with the eye.
He did not tell me what he needed to do, other than “laser surgery.”
He did not explain a blessed thing to me.
We were told by an assistant to come back in two hours for the surgery. We went out to eat and came back a little early, and we sat there until the appointed time.
We were then brought into another waiting area, we were still told absolutely nothing, and we waited, and waited, and waited some more.
Finally, after waiting an interminable amount of time, I was called into a room, and put in a chair that was facing the wall … not forward, but facing the wall.
The doctor came in, still not telling me anything about my malady, went to my chair, laid me prone on my back, and proceeded to knock the living hell out of me for the next 20 minutes.
He opened up my eye wide with his thumb, putting incredible pressure on the area above my left eye, and used a laser on my eye without any deadening agent, without anything where I would not feel the pain 100 percent like I did, without any anesthesia to lessen my anxiety and pain.
He told me to turn my head this way and that way, open my eye wider while he used his thumb to prop up and open my eye, and I was yelling and screaming for 20 minutes straight, but the doctor did not stop his work …. And I never lost consciousness, either (don’t ask me how I managed that; probably self-hypnosis at one point).
After 20 horrid minutes he was done, and proceeded to walk out of the room without saying a word to me.
What I could see out of my right eye was that he literally had one foot out the door when I asked him a few questions, but he gave some clipped responses that really didn’t illuminate me much of what had gone on.
I had to make a follow-up appointment for two weeks, which I did, and then we left, and honestly, I could not see much of anything.
My wife led me to the car, we got in, and we drove away.
About 10 minutes into the trip, I was suddenly able to see, and I said to my wife, “You know, I still see the squiggly lines.”
I gave it 24 hours, and I called up the place where I had this work done to find out all the obvious questions that were not answered on that day, such as, “What exactly was the problem with my eye?”
They said that the doctor would get back to me that day, but he never did.
Late in the day, I called them, and I asked them to speak with someone about what I had been through.
They said that the doctor’s last patient was at 4 p.m.—after being on hold for a few minutes it was slightly past 4 p.m.—and they would try to get him before he left for the day.
I waited and waited, and finally, someone came on the line—the doctor’s assistant, not the doctor.
I explained my situation, and I finally found out the following:
I have a horseshoe retinal tear, and the tear was surrounded by laser treatment to prevent it from becoming a retinal detachment.
No deadening agent was used, as the doctor felt that there was nothing to deaden, even though I was in constant pain and distress through the 20 minute procedure.
The floaters in my eye will remain there forever, unless a further, more serious surgery is performed.
The assistant, who was not present for the procedure, told me that he heard me yelling and screaming while it was being performed.
I asked him why I was not told a blessed thing by the doctor, and he apologized, but had no explanation.
That was that with that ... and I finally had my crown reimplanted in my mouth yesterday morning.
So here is where I stand now:
My left eye is a bit of a mess. I can still see pretty clearly out of it, but those two squiggly lines at the top … well, as the assistant said, many people have this, and they just get used to it to the point that they don’t see them anymore.
My proofreading days are over, because you cannot proofread unless you can see the words clearly.
I can still edit and write stories, with a lot of use of spell check, so I can continue to write this Rant and do my work for my remote job.
I can still drive, swim, watch TV and do whatever I want without fear.
But I do fear going back to this doctor, who had the bedside manner of Nurse Ratchett.
As I mentioned earlier, I had a procedure done a number of years ago on the same eye, where a vein was growing in the eye, and would have reached the iris and blinded me if I had not had it taken care of.
I had a doctor back then who spoke the whole thing out with me, made me so relaxed that I was able to take a needle to my eye—yes, I repeat, a needle to my eye—without being the least bit afraid.
The guy was a saint, and God saw that, as while in his early 40s, he died right on the job several weeks later, right in the same office he had worked on my problem.
Now, I have a doctor who had one foot in, one foot out, a doctor I have completely lost trust in. And by the way, this was the doctor who took over my previous doctor’s case load after he passed away.
I will let him complete his work on me—whatever that may be—and then, I will ask for another doctor to check up on me when I go to the specialist, because I amply cannot trust this doctor anymore after what just happened.
I will also ask for a second opinion from my regular eye doctor, because I trust him a heck of a lot more than the doctor that did the procedure on me.
What is almost funny about this, and I cannot elaborate on it, is that remember when I said my previous doctor was a saint? The funny thing is that my current doctor’s last name is pronounced the same way as the heavenly being’s common name is, but I cannot elaborate.
Yes, if I did not have the warped sense of humor I have, I swear to you, I would have crumpled to a pulp during the operation I just had.
So while I am back here, I am not the same, and may never be the same again.
I will get back to that in a moment, but just let me do what I have to do here first.
It is Friday, July 2, and we are officially at “hump day” for the year, as today is the 183rd day of 2021.
We are at the beginning of the July 4 weekend, and it will hopefully be a good one.
But for me, I have reached the true crossroads of my life.
Let me explain.
Last Saturday, while pumping gas at a local station, without any warning at all, I began to see things in my left eye that I had never seen before.
It looked like worms in my eye, and I thought that there might have been a bug in there, but this almost psychedelic sensation lasted about five minutes as I got home, worried, and I was as scared as I have ever been in my entire life.
I went into the bedroom, hoping that the sensation would go away, and it did … but it kind of morphed in one small, round spot that moved from one side of the eye to another, as if I was watching a baseball being hit over the fence for a home run on TV.
That sensation lasted about two munities, and when it went away, I was left with two squiggly, ever-moving lines in my eye, as if I had an eye lash or two stuck in the eye.
As all this was happening, I called my eye doctor, who suggested that I call the specialists that I normally go to and where I see my retinologist every few months. He felt they could serve me better, since several years ago they actually saved that eye after a “rogue” vein was growing into the iris of the eye.
Anyway, I could only make an appointment for the coming Monday, which I did, and that was that …
Or so I thought.
I found that even with the squigglies in my eye, I could do just about everything I had been doing, including driving, watching TV, etc. I could still see, but I had these two things in my eye, which had pretty much set themselves at the top of the left eye.
I went out and did what I always do on Saturday evening, which is bring in dinner for my family. The lines were still there, but I could see pretty clearly and I could drive, and I did just that.
I got home with the food, we began to eat, and about 20 minutes into our meal, I felt something in my mouth that was kind of funny, and lo and behold, one of my crowns came off tone of my back teeth.
Luckily, I was able to retrieve it, and I put it in a baggie so I could have it hopefully put back in my mouth.
But it was just Saturday, I had to go to the eye specialist on Monday, so I was going to have to wait a few days for the tooth to be fixed.
I took it pretty easy on Sunday, and on Monday morning, my wife and I went to the specialist to look at my eye.
I had a myriad of tests, and then my doctor emerged from the ether, looked at my eye, and told me point blank, “You aren’t going to like this, but you need laser surgery.”
Yup, just like that, and then he exited the room, saying little else to me.
He did not tell me what was wrong with the eye.
He did not tell me what he needed to do, other than “laser surgery.”
He did not explain a blessed thing to me.
We were told by an assistant to come back in two hours for the surgery. We went out to eat and came back a little early, and we sat there until the appointed time.
We were then brought into another waiting area, we were still told absolutely nothing, and we waited, and waited, and waited some more.
Finally, after waiting an interminable amount of time, I was called into a room, and put in a chair that was facing the wall … not forward, but facing the wall.
The doctor came in, still not telling me anything about my malady, went to my chair, laid me prone on my back, and proceeded to knock the living hell out of me for the next 20 minutes.
He opened up my eye wide with his thumb, putting incredible pressure on the area above my left eye, and used a laser on my eye without any deadening agent, without anything where I would not feel the pain 100 percent like I did, without any anesthesia to lessen my anxiety and pain.
He told me to turn my head this way and that way, open my eye wider while he used his thumb to prop up and open my eye, and I was yelling and screaming for 20 minutes straight, but the doctor did not stop his work …. And I never lost consciousness, either (don’t ask me how I managed that; probably self-hypnosis at one point).
After 20 horrid minutes he was done, and proceeded to walk out of the room without saying a word to me.
What I could see out of my right eye was that he literally had one foot out the door when I asked him a few questions, but he gave some clipped responses that really didn’t illuminate me much of what had gone on.
I had to make a follow-up appointment for two weeks, which I did, and then we left, and honestly, I could not see much of anything.
My wife led me to the car, we got in, and we drove away.
About 10 minutes into the trip, I was suddenly able to see, and I said to my wife, “You know, I still see the squiggly lines.”
I gave it 24 hours, and I called up the place where I had this work done to find out all the obvious questions that were not answered on that day, such as, “What exactly was the problem with my eye?”
They said that the doctor would get back to me that day, but he never did.
Late in the day, I called them, and I asked them to speak with someone about what I had been through.
They said that the doctor’s last patient was at 4 p.m.—after being on hold for a few minutes it was slightly past 4 p.m.—and they would try to get him before he left for the day.
I waited and waited, and finally, someone came on the line—the doctor’s assistant, not the doctor.
I explained my situation, and I finally found out the following:
I have a horseshoe retinal tear, and the tear was surrounded by laser treatment to prevent it from becoming a retinal detachment.
No deadening agent was used, as the doctor felt that there was nothing to deaden, even though I was in constant pain and distress through the 20 minute procedure.
The floaters in my eye will remain there forever, unless a further, more serious surgery is performed.
The assistant, who was not present for the procedure, told me that he heard me yelling and screaming while it was being performed.
I asked him why I was not told a blessed thing by the doctor, and he apologized, but had no explanation.
That was that with that ... and I finally had my crown reimplanted in my mouth yesterday morning.
So here is where I stand now:
My left eye is a bit of a mess. I can still see pretty clearly out of it, but those two squiggly lines at the top … well, as the assistant said, many people have this, and they just get used to it to the point that they don’t see them anymore.
My proofreading days are over, because you cannot proofread unless you can see the words clearly.
I can still edit and write stories, with a lot of use of spell check, so I can continue to write this Rant and do my work for my remote job.
I can still drive, swim, watch TV and do whatever I want without fear.
But I do fear going back to this doctor, who had the bedside manner of Nurse Ratchett.
As I mentioned earlier, I had a procedure done a number of years ago on the same eye, where a vein was growing in the eye, and would have reached the iris and blinded me if I had not had it taken care of.
I had a doctor back then who spoke the whole thing out with me, made me so relaxed that I was able to take a needle to my eye—yes, I repeat, a needle to my eye—without being the least bit afraid.
The guy was a saint, and God saw that, as while in his early 40s, he died right on the job several weeks later, right in the same office he had worked on my problem.
Now, I have a doctor who had one foot in, one foot out, a doctor I have completely lost trust in. And by the way, this was the doctor who took over my previous doctor’s case load after he passed away.
I will let him complete his work on me—whatever that may be—and then, I will ask for another doctor to check up on me when I go to the specialist, because I amply cannot trust this doctor anymore after what just happened.
I will also ask for a second opinion from my regular eye doctor, because I trust him a heck of a lot more than the doctor that did the procedure on me.
What is almost funny about this, and I cannot elaborate on it, is that remember when I said my previous doctor was a saint? The funny thing is that my current doctor’s last name is pronounced the same way as the heavenly being’s common name is, but I cannot elaborate.
Yes, if I did not have the warped sense of humor I have, I swear to you, I would have crumpled to a pulp during the operation I just had.
So while I am back here, I am not the same, and may never be the same again.
It was a real chore to write this out, and I am tired as can be right now.
I will still have a smile on my face, and it will have to cover up the anxiety I have had from this incident, which completely came out of nowhere without warning.
Yes, we are at “hump day” today for 2021, but I, personally, am at the crossroads of my life, still able to write and do what I want but not feeling whole anymore.
I will still have a smile on my face, and it will have to cover up the anxiety I have had from this incident, which completely came out of nowhere without warning.
Yes, we are at “hump day” today for 2021, but I, personally, am at the crossroads of my life, still able to write and do what I want but not feeling whole anymore.
It is my problem, and I will deal with it.
But I am not too happy right now.
Have a great holiday and a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.
Have a great holiday and a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.
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