Eyes Wide Open

I’m not an big believer in proverbs. "Eye" never believed that every cloud has a silver lining, that time heals all wounds or you reap what you sow. "Eye" am, however, going to have to change my mind about “when it rains, it pours”. "Eye" think that one’s actually more of an idiom than a proverb, but whatever. This isn’t English class.

About the same time my TMJ got really bad last month, my contact lens kept falling out of my right eye and I did notice that when I was reading I’d have to hold the paper farther away to focus. I figured my vision had changed, and I’d go get an eye exam as soon as "eye" finished all this dental work.

About a week ago I woke up and my right eye was all swollen prompting everyone I saw that day to ask “What’s the matter with your eye?”. I thought I had a stye and bought some stye stuff, used hot compresses and really by the end of that day, it looked ok. I did notice that the swelling was higher up on my eyelid than a stye normally is, but it didn’t hurt or anything and there’s nothing quite like denial to get you to ignore something that you shouldn’t.

Thursday afternoon, I went for a followup appointment with the oral surgeon and when he walked in, said “What’s the matter with your eye?”. I didn't know. It looked fine to me before I left for the appointment. He gave me a mirror. It looked very red and swollen. No denying the unattractiveness of that.

So, I called my opthamologist and asked if I could come in on Friday afternoon. When I woke up on Friday morning, my eye looked ok again to me so I figured I had some kind of eye infection, she’d hand me some eye drops and I’d be on my merry way.

Of course not. That would just be way too easy.

After the how-have-you-been pleasantries, she flat out said that my eyes didn't appear symmetrical and she wanted to do some measuring along with a vision test. Then she poked and pushed on my eyelid for a while and asked if I noticed that lump in my eyelid.

“It’s not a stye?” I asked.

Of course it wasn’t a stye. If it were a stye, she would have asked how long I've had that stye on my eye.

She decided I had a cyst in my eyelid and it had to come out. The cyst itself was harmless, but it was affecting my vision and the symmetrical appearance of my eyes. She preferred to “surgically remove it” right then. It would take about 15 minutes and then I’d be out of there.

I asked if it was going to leave a scar on my eye and she said no, because she was going to make the incision on the inside of my eyelid. Eye Caramba! That didn’t sound very pleasant at all.

It was probably best that I didn’t have any time to think about this, research it and subsequently freak out ahead of time because removing this cyst from my inside-out-eye lid not only sounded like an unpleasant experience, it truly was.

Surprising even myself, I was fine initially. The lidocaine injections into my eye lid hurt quite a bit (no matter how saggy I get, Botox injections are forever now out of the question), but then she tipped the chair back, told me to look down and to the left and started the procedure. Even though it was incredibly freaky, I was breathing, relatively calm and very proud of myself for the first 13 minutes.

All of a sudden I felt really hot and dizzy. The next thing I remember I was listening to her tell me I was ok and to fight the urge to move. She would be done in 30 seconds. I obeyed because she was using a very sharp object on my inside-out eyelid, but I was hyperventilating and that was a VERY long 30 seconds.

I told her I was having a panic attack. She agreed at that I was at that time, but she said initially I had pretty much just basically fainted during the procedure. It happens to a lot of people. Not to worry, she said. Ok, sure, whatever. The eye drops I came for would have been so much easier.

It did open my eyes to the fact that maybe there is some truth to these proverbs. If there was a silver lining in this cloud it was that after the lidocaine wore off, my eye throbbed so badly that I forgot for a while how much my jaw hurt. Time is healing this wound, too. It does feel better this morning and I no longer have to hold what I’m trying to read at arm’s length.

I will, however, need to make a trip to the drugstore to purchase some purple, black and blue eye shadow so I can make my eyes "symmetrical". Fortunately, dark and heavy Cleopatra kind of eye shadow is back, I think. (If it isn’t, I don’t want to know.) The Queen of Denial is going to have to impersonate The Queen of The Nile for a little bit.

Ok, The Rock Chick concedes. Sometimes when it rains, it does really pour.