One in Ten Million

I am from a long line of men on both sides of my family who pretty much refuse to go to the doctor. Arm falling off, it's fine I'll walk it off. Coughing up ugly mucous monsters, fine.

Most of the time it is only on occasions where someone forces me to go that I will. I don't know if that's just a southern male thing or what, but it's the same for pretty much all the men in my family, regardless of any other peculiarities of character.

So it took my mother making me an appointment to see my optometrist this weekend for me to actually go and get some new glasses (which I have been needing for about three years, as it was getting to the point where it was harder to see through the scratches and whatnot than to just puzzle it out without them).

So I go with the expectation of just getting fitted with a new prescription and that's that.

But noooo.

After the first doctor spends quite some time looking over my eyes, specifically my gimpy left one, he talks at me a bit and then tells me he wants to go get the other doctor to come and look at my eye. So I sit and wait for a few more minutes (20 or so) until the other doctor is free and then he gets out optics and looks as well. Then there is some conference and he says "I wish I could see this on my scope."

At this point they're making me a bit nervous don't you know.

Some background on my gimpy eye. When I was very young I had some form of fever blister on my eye that did left a scar on my cornea and my retina that makes my vision not so good out of that eye. I can see movement and detail and whatnot, but it's pretty blurry and my better eye picks up most of the slack. It's been like that for most of my life, and it doesn't bother me so much.

Anyway, back to the two doctors and the various nurses clucking about my eye.

This ends up with the first doctor telling me that I've got some blood vessel growth on my eye that's growing down over my cornea and could lead to--dum-dum-dum--Glaucoma.

Then gives me the warning symptoms of a retinal detachment, telling me that it is a fairly remote possibility, but something that I should be aware of.

"If you ever see bright lightning bolts over your field of vision and lots of big floaters and your vision starts getting dimmer and fading out, get to a doctor immediately. Every second is more of your vision that you save."

That's some scary stuff right there.

Also he talked a little bit about a corneal transplant being the only real thing that could fix the problem.

Then he set up an appointment to see the specialist the next day so that she could give an opinion on my case.

Needless to say that with the already stressful week this was freaking me out more than a little bit.

The next day I go in to see the specialist, and luckily she's quite a bit more reassuring than the previous day's visit. The chances of me going blind in my left eye are pretty remote, and the new growth doesn't look very bad, but it is something that should be watched. She did say that my eye's condition is one in ten million. Perhaps she was exagerating, but I like that, at the very least, I am one of maybe 200 people in America that have this type of gimpy eye.

Immediately my visions of corneal detachment and eventual eye-patch and monocle wearing started evaporating.

So now I have an appointment with a corneal specialist here in Nashville. Yet another doctor to see.

All because I wanted some new glasses.