REPRIEVE!

View from MEEI 10th floor waiting room

So, I met with my eye surgeon yesterday. He feels it’s not yet time to sew my eye shut. The orb is most def dry BUT with all the drops and ointment I’m putting in (combined with my lack of pain, redness or further vision loss), I’m doing okay. I need to be on the lookout for those nasty symptoms and be monitored by my awesome cornea minder, Doc Jacobs. If shit acts up or Jacobs discovers a rabid naked mole-rat burrowing ‘round looking to cause some ocular havoc, well then, it’s OR time again for yurs truly.

Lemme just tell you, I thought I was all emotionally prepared for what I felt was inevitable, more slice action AND losing half my vision. Maybe I was but my first reaction—OH-MY-GOD-IS-THIS-TRUE-OR-ARE-YOU-CRUELLY-FUNNIN’-WITH-ME and extreme relief beg to differ.

I only mention it but I was doing reasonably alright—no panic, already keeping a close watch on the old peepers—before my generally unobservant neuro-ophthalmologist freaked. Normally, I see him once a year, have a few tests done, his baby docs give me a studied look see after which he steps in for a fast two minute glance and glad handing. He’s been pretty useless. I rely on Jacobs for my actual eye care. Why do I still see neuro-oph guy? I was told I need to (in order to get referrals to Jacobs? Insurance reasons? //shrugs//) 

What was his freakage about? I suspect the origins lay in his asking me (scolding me?) why I’d missed a few of our annual appointments. Instead of yelling at him to read my motherfucking chart, I calmly explained that I’d had four neurosurgeries in two years, spent four+ months of those two years in hospital and rehab joints, had to relearn how to walk (ongoing) and, given my relative fragility, was disinclined to be out amongst the COVID spreading masses.

I believe my calm soliloquy snapped him out of his astoundingly clueless I’m-the-head-of-the-department-and-you-should-feel-lucky-to-be-in-my-presence bullshit. Possibly what I’d conveyed was I’m not impressed and If you did your damn job, motherfucker, you’d know all this already.

In any case, I’m now back in my usual wait, watch and see mode. I’m totally cool with that. I can now get back to the important business of rehab exercising, finding the perfect bra (akin to hunting the Holy Grail), reading steam-punk novels, tax prepping and annoying Ten, Jen and Oni.

Tenacious
     adjective
holding together; not easily pulled asunder; tough.

Donna was not a whiny little twat—no, she was one tenacious motherfucker.