Sarah Nigbor

Growing up, my best friend made fun of me for coming down with strange illnesses that most kids we knew didn’t get. I was the one out of all of us to get pneumonia, the Beijing flu, mono. What fun!

The weird-o-meter struck again last week. On my way to the El Paso Days Parade, my right eye was throbbing and watering. I chalked it up to another sinus flare-up or allergies. It soon dissipated with time and the help of Ibuprofen. Throughout the week, I had a strange eye headache just in that eye, but I decided that must be due to staring at a computer for so much of my life.

By Friday evening, I could no longer make excuses. I woke up barely able to open my eye. The light sensitivity was unreal. I could have watered several acres with the amount of liquid leaking from my eye. It felt like grit was grinding itself into my eyeball. My vision was blurry at best. I held out until early evening but after a miserable trip to the store, I couldn’t do it anymore. I gave in. I went to Urgent Care.

I’m extremely stubborn and I hate going to the doctor. Not that anyone likes it, but I really, really hate it. I avoided going to the doctor like the plague throughout my 20s and 30s. When I was 14 and having my tonsils out, I woke up during the surgery. Something went wrong with the anesthetic. All I remember is the searing pain and hearing someone exclaim, “She’s awake!” before the blackness enclosed me again. During my emergency C-section, I tried telling the doctor the epidural hadn’t worked and I could feel the cuts splitting me in two to get my baby girl out safely. They finally believed me when I passed out from the pain of being gutted like a deer without an epidural. I don’t have a good track record with doctors or anesthesia.

The reason I started going to a doctor again was because I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all (three sinus surgeries later, I can). Had I known it would be a three-year ordeal, I’m not sure I would have done it. All these thoughts were whirling through my cynical head as I sat looking suspiciously around the Urgent Care waiting room out of one eye. I looked like I’d been punched in the face.

When the triage nurse asked if I thought I could read the eye chart on the wall, I laughed. As I sat soaking up tissue after tissue with leaking tears, I tried to keep the negative thoughts at bay, the pity party in check.

The doctor came in and I swear she was an angel. She seemed to know just what to do. I was given numbing drops in my eye (and I beamed like a little child when she said how well I took it compared to others she’s treated). They stained my cornea in order to look for tears/rips and foreign objects. None were there, thankfully. She diagnosed it as a bacterial infection, something anyone can get thanks to the lovely bacteria all around us. Leave it to me though, to get it in the eyeball. It wasn’t pink eye at least, though maybe that would’ve been better. I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m writing/editing everything this week with one eye working and the other a blurry, antibiotic ointment-slathered, dripping mess. The gritty feeling is subsiding, but the pain is not, so a follow up with the opthamologist comes on Wednesday. Completing household tasks such as cooking and doing laundry has been interesting with one eye working. When I forgot to turn on the oven and dinner wasn’t cooked when I opened it, I blamed it on my eye. My daughter not so politely informed me I had a bum eye, not a brain injury. The sympathy was overwhelming.

I truly credit people who are seeing impaired and don’t let it hinder them. Yet another thing I’ve taken for granted until it was affected – my sight. One thing I don’t need my eye for is counting my blessings.