...and giving.

Went to the eye doctor for my routine yearly eye exam this morning.  Routine, until he found something odd in my eye?  Which turned out to be a sort of tear/hole thing in my retina brought on by the shrinking of vitreous jelly, something normal that typically doesn't happen until one is in his/her 40s.  I managed to get to a retina specialist in Montgomery today (which was a bit crazy, since both doctors were going out of town today and I'll basically be out of town for the next two weeks), who found not just the one tear in my right eye, but also two others in my left!  Laser surgery was decided upon, and in I went into the laser room...

...and back out I came, as I had freaked out enough after a few minutes of lasers in my eye to warrant taking a 20-30 minute break.  I'm normally a really good, calm patient.  I can handle crap if necessary.  But I'd spent the morning straining my eyes to look in awkward directions, with more bright lights and drops put in my eyes than I could count, and something about suddenly seeing BRIGHT GREEN!!! lasers shooting into my eyes was more than I could take.  We tried doing the procedure lying down and sitting up before they gave me a break to calm down.

Fortunately the doctor was just so completely nice--he reminded me a lot of Steve Betz and my Spanish professor from last semester (which makes sense, as those two remind me of one another).  He was very comforting and kind, and really made me feel as at ease as was physically possible for me.  I went back in and had the same problems at first (by the way, I don't understand how anyone can go through that and not have something forcing their eye open... yeesh), but at some point, I dunno.  My mind just sort of shut down?  I guess the fear/discomfort/pain from bright lights and lasers made something in my brain go, "Okay, we cannot be aware for this procedure.  I'm-a shut stuff down for awhile, tell me when we need to come back."  It was an extremely odd sensation; I could follow commands like "look down, look left," but I was completely unaware of what was going on.  If he reached up to adjust the thing holding my eye, it just looked like a blurry, disembodied hand coming towards me.  For a few seconds at least, I literally thought I was dreaming and I did that thing I do in dreams when I'm aware I'm dreaming, where I wonder what will happen next.  The good thing about this was that there wasn't much pain or anxiety after; the bad thing was that I "came back" after the doctor had been talking to me for I'm not exactly sure how long.

So I'll have to return for a check-up on the results of today's procedure, then go back regularly to make sure I don't get any more of this retinal business.  I'm gonna go ahead and hope Heather's boyfriend Eric was right when he noted that bad things come in threes--after tornado, stolen property, and eye damage/surgery, I'm not sure I can handle much more!  But I'm a firm believer in the staying-positive approach, and here it goes:

1.  If I had had my eye exam in January as I used to, they never would have found this.  I'd have gone another year with this problem getting worse, and could actually have lost vision because of it.  I count today a success and think it was good luck, not bad.
2.  The nonstop piling of crap has actually started to become funny now.  I can laugh about the fact that my walking into a room seems to bring disaster--and I don't mean than in an emo way.  It's really quite funny.  I haven't even mentioned the fact that lately technology has been breaking around me.  It's absurd.
3.  I think I'm successfully past the breakdown stage.  I'm not in a good place, but for the past weeks (and even months, really) I've felt like I'm on the verge of having some sort of breakdown just because everything has been teetering so precariously on the edge of disaster.  Enough has happened now that my practical side has kicked in and I can say, "Okay, shit happens.  Let's work on fixing it and moving on."

Thanks for all the kind comments on the last post, everybody.  Let's hope this is the last Vox post of this nature for quite some time.  =)

Edited to Add:  I forgot to mention that while at my normal eye doctor, I got to see my retina at I guess a cellular level basically?  I'm still not completely sure, but he had this amazing machine (and frankly, he was quite excited to get to use it) that's very new and very impressive.  I think it's something to do with this, except the image looked something like this.  Have you seen your retina today?  I have!

Edited Yet Again:  I think this is basically my situation.  Except we caught it early enough that I experienced mostly none of the symptoms, and no fluid got behind the retina.  In case you cared to know.  As pointed out in this article (which is way more severe than what I had going on), this is more likely to happen in people like myself with myopia, as we have longer eyes and our retinas are stretched thinner.  WHO KNEW.  (Oh, Wikipedia... like Pringles, once I start I just can't stop.)