...also at the beach, some more enjoyable moments, and some time spent reading, and soon, some pain in my left eye was noticed.
Again with the eyes and the pain.
Believing it not to be from
last week's boiling soapy water incident, believing it was, this time, sand... we carried on with our weekend at the beach; me with eye pain,
jkh_22 now experiencing some significant back pain.
Big dinner at a restaurant we like with the greatest wine ever ever, Harvest. We with no reservations ate dinner sitting at the bar.
We actually sat at that bar next to 2 friendly fellows whose wives weren't able to join them. We all shared all of our food. Finish, goodbye, race back to room to catch Sex and the City and Project Greenlight.
It isn't until the next morning, after coffee, that it dawned on us: Me, with some eye pain more now, jkh with back pain still, it dawned on us: Last night, those dinner-acquaintances: to my immediate right
Mike: An Optometrist, to his right, his pal,
Elihue: The Chiropractor.
For someone with eye pain and no health insurance you'd think I'd be more resourceful than to miss out on such an opportunity.
Back in NYC, left eye hurting still; now a visit to the Eye Clinic on 14th and 2nd Ave. After a good long walk-in clinic-style wait,
Hello, Doctor Alfonse...
I don't actually remember his real name. He never told me.
I like a left-handed doctor.
I can imagine that he has a creative mind. Not too cerebral. Clearly brainy, yet imaginitive. This will save him from sliding into a walk-in-clinic-outpatient-routine, I think. I overhear him use the word "wise" to one of the other doctors. Wise. Maybe he's wise.... He drew a lot as a kid maybe. Spaceships, and animals. Animals in space. He did well in highschool biology. Scholorship to college, or not. Pursued Bio-Medical Illustration to merge his talents; it was there that he became so irrepressibly fascinated with the inner-workings of the eye. Lenses and corneas, pupils, and irises, and stuff. He becomes so fascinated. He must become an Opthamologist. He leaves his homeland of Puerto Rico to get an education at NYU.
He puts some drops in my eyes after my vision test. I have no idea the results of my vision test. They tell me nothing here.
My eyeball being shined light into it, i can see my own little eye veins and capilaries in my line of vision now. I don't know how or why that is. I start to think about what kind of Doctor
I'd be. I'd be the doctor who explains everything.
I'd be a right-handed doctor, but I'd intuit what the patient was thinking and answer her questions before she could even think to ask them. I'd be bilingual of course, somehow.
After these drops, You will have some blurry vision.
Blurry how?
You will have trouble to read....
He is Benicio Del Toro, in accent, cadence and volume of speech.
...for a few hours.
Waiting for the drops which will render me unable to read, I'm directed back to the waiting room. I wait with children all wearing glasses and speaking Spanish.
There is a young autistic girl, I think; She rocks on her mom's lap while her grandmother sings in her ear.
"Mariana's a beautiful girl...Mariana's a beautiful girl...Mariana's a beautiful girl... Mariana's a beautiful girl" to the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance, I think. Later in it's cruelest betrayal my brain will replace this sweetly sung song and sentiment with instead the tune of
La Cuccaraccha.
Then her grandma sings
Frére Jacques, but... in Spanish.
I am called back into Doctor DelToro's office,
He is holding a pointy, needle-sharp tweezer in his left hand. My left eye is opened and kind of numbed. He pulls out a black speck.
Aha, The Sand, I think.
And
Now he's intuiting my thoughts:
Too small. Don't think you'd feel that.
Back in with tweezers.... its like he's digging under a couch cushion. With tweezers.
He's playing
Operate.
Out he pulls... something else... a....
a Long, And Blond... hair.
This is a hair.
Really? A hair?
A hair....
...it's quite.... long.
Benicio is done. My pain is gone. No glaucoma, no diabetes, no conjunctivitis. Just hair.
Outside now, you know what? After drops in my eyes that they put there on purpose, which turn my pupils to silver dollars, I cannot see. For the next couple of hours, I do have trouble to read. I can't read my phone to tell what time it is. No phone calls. No seeing camera display. No banking at the atm, no matter how hard I squint I have no idea who these 22 new emails are from. There is no backing up far enough to read. It's really true. It's incrediby impossible to overcome this handicap until the drops wear off, no matter how much squinting.
Go to the park. Lay down. Rest. Wait.
