I can see clearly now, so put down the scalpel and back away slowly....

Well, I have just been over to Polski3's place, where he has been told by his doctor to shape up. I so empathize with him and with the feeling that this kind of news engenders.

I am a reasonably mature person, of above-average intelligence, if I do say so, and the only reason I do is to underscore the fact that I strive to be reasonably informed and cooperative with the health-care professionals in my life. Intellectually, I understand that I am no longer 17, and that therefore the old chassis might require less benign neglect and more maintenance. I understand this, I do.

But!

Picture, if you will, being trapped at a doctor's office for two and a half hours every two months. This has been my life for the last four years. During this time, I have to stick my face into all kinds of fiendish machines and look at all kinds of weird lights and am told not to blink for what seems like a half-hour at a time. These people keep refusing to believe that I don't wear glasses. They also keep refusing to believe that I have better than 20/20 vision, so they keep giving me eye exams, and I keep reeling off the letters at 20/10 and they keep making surprised noises. I swear, I oughta go up to the machine sometime and memorize the manufacturer's information down in the corner and reel that off at them nonchalantly. That would really freak them out. And since they leave me in these little rooms for half-an hour at a whack, I could have plenty of time. That might be fun.

I can see really well. I can read tiny print from all the way across my classroom with ease. I can see kids misbehave from the back of my head. And I (probably) have glaucoma.

Why do I say probably? Because of the 8 eye doctors I have seen, 5 hem and haw a lot and say things like "Hmmm!" and "Strange!" and other sorts of non-comforting words when looking at photos of my optic nerve. They do not seem to understand the effect that this has on their patient, whom they have made blind with all kinds of nasty yellow eyedrops that must have come from a spitting cobra somewhere.

How do I feel when they keep acting so shocked and puzzled? I'll tell you: I feel like the owner of a ten year old Honda whose car starts making strange noises and when she finally takes the thing to a mechanic, the guy pops the hood, takes a quick step back and hollers to a colleague "Hey Earl! Come get a load of this!" and the next thing you know they are uncoiling a thirty-foot long boa constrictor from around the fan housing. This should not be. I would rather be told that my eyes are mind-numbingly boring. But no. My optic nerves are not "normal." My pressures are low as long as I take my eyedrops every night. Yet still they act like I've got a boa constrictor under the hood. I do not want a boa constrictor under the hood. I want them to go, "Of course," and replace a belt or something and send me on my merry way. I do not want to be a medical oddity. I want them to be able to tell me that nothing is wrong, dammit.

But even of the doctors that won't definitively say I have glaucoma, two want to shoot lasers into my eyes.

So when some adorable young doctor nonchalantly tosses off, "Well, I don't think an argon-laser would work well in your case, because you don't have much pigment somethingsomething, instead I think that a mrflthump laser would work much better blah blah blah....." Now, why do I mention a "mrflthump laser?" Because the blood starts pounding in my ears every time someone mentions surgery on my eyes, and I can't hear what Doogie Houser is saying for all the thumpthumpthumping of my heart. And I can't write down what he has saying, because.... wait for it.... he's made me blind by dilating my eyes to do all these freakin' tests.

I love that. The last doctor, who is no doubt very good and very patient and everything, nonetheless kept trying to show me the tiny lines and dots on a graph of the results from one of my tests, and when I started laughing she no doubt thought that I had lost it and yes, there was a bit of the hysterical in my laugh but really it was because... I! COULDN'T! SEE! She herself had dilated my eyes so wide that I looked like one of those sad little waifs or kitties on those black velvet paintings or perhaps a lemur. So, you know, expecting me to process anything visually at that time was really a bit much.

Now, like everything else, I am of decidedly strong opinion regarding surgery on my baby blues. I am not in favor of lasers being shot into my eyes, in case you were wondering. Lasers are for killing sci-fi creatures and making cool light shows to entertain crowds of people, half of whom have been smoking something. My mama taught me when I was a wee lass that sharp things should not be tolerated near the eyes, and that advice has stood me in good stead. I agree with Mom on this one, and also on her advice that one should never allow oneself to gaze at very bright lights. Lasers are very bright lights. Ergo, this girl wants nothing to do with surgery or lasers near her eyes. I've never even put a contact in my eye. When I first had to start putting drops in my eye, it would take an average of 6 attempts before I could get the drop in without closing my eye before the thing dropped onto my cheek. I've probably put half as many drops up my nose as in my eye. I am sure that shooting a laser into someone's eye is nothing-- to them. But to me, it's like expecting me to bungee-jump. Why would any sane person want to do something crazy like that? Falling is not a form of entertainment. Falling is something that can end badly. So let's avoid that, shall we?

No one knows why my eyes are "possibly" damaged. It could be a massive blood loss I exprienced after the birth of my first child.

(And a word to the wise: if you have ever experienced a sudden blood loss, please promise me you will go get your eyes thoroughly examined. It will save you grief later. Trust me. Don't get so busy with kids and life that you blow it off, because nobody else might tell you that this could affect your eyes.)

They may not be damaged at all. They may just be weird. I am so used to being told that I am weird that this doesn't even cause a blink. But doctors are trained to act based on the typical case, and so it seems to stump them when someone comes along who confounds all expectations. But we are all individuals. None of us is perfectly normal. This goes along with the fact that I have some sort of completely safe but abnormal structure deep in my brain that was found by a CAT scan once, that I have such low blood pressure that they sometimes think I don't have a pulse even though I am in a stressful occupation and weigh more than I should, and that I can carry a grown man around in a fireman's carry even though my BMI is appalling. And my eyes are aparently the bearded lady in the carnival of opthamology.

So that's where it sits right now. I have promised to return in two weeks to sit in the doctor's office all day so they can check my pressures during the day. But hey, they say they have wi-fi. I can bring my laptop and blog to you, my friends, whilst they torture me. Won't that be fun?

Time is on my side

Last week was parent-teacher conferences. As if that wasn't fun enough, I also had to go in for my semi-annual eye checkup, because I have an eye condition.

The appointment was for 2:30. School lets out at 2:15, so I asked one of my colleagues to watch my class for the last 10 minutes so I could be on time. I had to be back at school at 5:00, freshly pressed, rested, fed, and refreshed.

Got there on time. The waiting room was not that full. I had brought my iPod and a book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans, which is about sharecroppers during the Great Depression.

After 20 minutes of waiting, I was ushered in to take my field vision test. They tell you that blinking will not affect the test results, but does that still apply when your eyeballs feel like they were dipped in sawdust coated in Tabasco sauce? I'm not sure.

So I clicked the little button every time I saw an micron-sized light, for what seems like forever, but was actually about 5 minutes. Then I'm ushered into an examination room, where the nurse/tech puts more Tabasco sauce in my eyes and then attempts to start sticking devices ON MY EYEBALL!

On an instinctual level, I do not wish to have devices actually placed on my eyeball, and no matter how much I talk to myself, my brainstem, which in this case behaves like a recalcitrant toddler in front of a plate of sashimi ("Don't WANT to!"), takes control of my eyelids and neck muscles and avoids this procedure until finally the tech rolls her eyes, sighs, and grabs my eyelids and pries them apart herself and then holds them that way while she shoves this shiny thing onto my eye. I mean, I feel like that guy in "The Pit and the Pendulum."

After she finishes fueling my nightmares, she leaves. Everything is blurry because my eyes are dilated by the Tabasco sauce. But my iPod battery gives out, and I try meditating but my eyes are streaming orange tears, so I finally give up and hold my book two feet away from me, squint, and start reading. My butt gets numb, the chair in uncomfortable, and I'm reading condescending, flowery prose poetry about a girl who is married to a man who doesn't deserve her.

After I've read 87 pages in this fashion, I get up. It is now 4:15, and still no doctor. I square my shoulders and walk into the hallway, look up and down, no doctor, and I decide that I have commitments elsewhere. I walk up to the appointments secretary, who is chatting with another nurse. No one should read 87 pages of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at one doctor's visit.

MC: I have to leave now.

AS: Ummm.... what?

MC: I have to leave. Right now.

Nurse Ratchet: (Obviously thinking, "Holy crap! She's still here!") I'm sure the doctor needs to talk to you, though.

MC: And I need to talk to her, else I wouldn't have made this appointment. But I have to be back at work in 30 minutes, driving through rush hour traffic, I need to change clothes, wash my face, put on new makeup, and now you people have made me blind, which should increase the fun factor of accomplishing these tasks exponentially. But I have to leave. Now.

AS: Well, do you want to schedule a new appointment now?

MC: What would be the point of that (thinking to myself, "since this one has obviously turned out so well,")? Look, I'm not angry, although I should be, but I must go. Right now. Not five minutes from now. Now.

Right about this time here comes the doctor with some woman who was not in the waiting room when I came. I can tell she's thinking, "Hey, the cattle have stampeded their pen." She pulls me into a room for fifteen seconds, shows me the printout of my field vision test, says there's an area of concern, but that I "aced" the test (How can these two statements be compatible?) and that we'll just check it again in six months, and then disappears again. I pay (yes, that was stupid, but my default mode is good girl/pleaser) and then I leave. I manage to weave through the hellacious traffic, clean myself up, and speed to school for 3.5 hours of alternating boredom and talking, all the while with eyes like an alien's.

For this I waited nearly two hours? And why is there this assumption that my time is worthless? What is the point of an appointment if I have to wait two hours? Why can't I call them before my appointment, ask how far behind they are running, and show up then? I paid a total of $18 for aftercare for the thrill of NOT being seen by the doctor. Meanwhile, there's an "area of concern," and I start having anxiety attacks about going blind, because I'm too tired to be rational.

Then I realize. Some people get treated like this during parent conferences. They line up like cattle, and get their concerns ignored. I resolve to not be one of those teachers.