Girl Gone Blind

Today was god’s way of noticing that I had gone almost an entire year of life without visiting an emergency room. What better way to remedy that situation than some good ‘ol trauma to the face?

I can’t see. I just got back from the hospital. I’m writing this with my eyes closed. Come on home row, don’t fail me now!

Walking back from lunch (Italian hero, not the usual), I tried to hurry past some oogling construction workers when a gust of wind carried some debris into my eyes. I couldn’t see, there was a stinging pain, and you know how those sorts of problems usually fix themselves? This one, not so much. With my eye getting worse, I hobbled back to school in terribly high heels.

At this point, I could only use one eye, and my right hand covered the half of my face in pain. I must have looked like a real wreck, because the security guard said “Jackie, what the hell are you doing?” when I walked into the school building. “What am I doing? Just playing a fun game called ‘affect your depth perception.’ I want to see how long I can go before I hit something.” The nurse then told me my eye had been cut, and I needed to get to the hospital.

As much as I tried to hide my face trauma, everyone at school saw it happen. I mean, like, everyone. It was almost like having the worst pimple of life smack on the top of your nose, only instead, this problem affected my eyes, and wasn’t caused by post-adolescence.

Onward to the hospital, where I sat in a waiting room, holding a paper towel over my eye like some sort of sad, ill-prepared pirate.

Thanks to Nurse Paul and his fast-acting pleasantries, I immediately calmed down, especially when he numbed my eye. I figured I was in good hands. Too bad Jewish mothers never push the idea of finding a nice “Jewish Nurse” to marry – if only he’d been a doctor! He even gave me a sweetass hospital bracelet, that even with one eye, I could tell was sweetass.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in?” he asked. The question threw me off, as I immediately had to come up with what “1” and “10” would be equal to on the pain scale. If “1” is the equivalent of being poked too hard, and 10 is something like “loss of limb”, my eye must have been a 6.5. But, overall, I think the eye gets it’s own scale of pain, where 1 is “ow, I’ve looked into the sun” and 10 is “ow, I’ve lost my eye”. Nurse Paul “stained my eye” which involved putting some kind of green dye in it that made everything appear green. It was kinda’ like having a really lame superhero power for a few minutes. Paul-dizzle tried to make a few jokes to lighten the mood, but I had to explain very politely that things just aren’t as funny when everything looks green.

After the numbing, staining, ointmenting, and shot, it was finally time to go. There was no eyepatch necessary for my recovery, something I could have only imagined to spark a schoolwide epidemic of pirate jokes, and besides, I gave up my habit of dressing in ‘pirate casual’ freshman year of college. Regardless, with “talk like a pirate day” having recently past, not even a bedazzled eyepatch would have been okay, so I’m glad it was avoided.

Once home, I had a bit of an appetite. I finally opened my sandwich, (the reason this whole thing started in the first place) only to discover that there was TURKEY on my ITALIAN HERO. COULD THIS DAY HAVE BEEN ANY WORSE?! Overcoming disappointment, I was surprised to see there really is nothing like eating an entire bag of sun chips with your eyes closed (with the best part being, of course, that they have 33% less fat than the standard potato chip!).

And now that I’m home and typing with one eye, I’m totally breaking the rule on my discharge sheet, clearly stating that I can’t watch TV or read, usually the only two things people do when they get sick and can’t do anything else. The Tetanus Shot makes me feel like I’ve been punched…EVERYWHERE. I’ll heal in the next 24-48 hours, and all will be well. I mean, I shouldn’t complain; 50 cent got shot NINE times and he be RAPPIN’ bout it (coincidentally, getting shot is number 9 on the generic pain scale, getting shot in the eye, however, is a 10).