Tuesday, September 4, 2018

I can fit you in for surgery at noon. It's 11:15 now. Who can come pick you up afterward?

After eight days of lying around miserably following my emergency eye surgery to stave off blindness in my right eye, keeping my head parallel to the floor for as much and as well as I could, I presented myself to the doctor for my one week check-up.  It did not go well.

"Your three tears in the superior region of the retina are still adhering due to the lasering I performed last week but your retina is detaching in the inferior region of your right eye, perhaps due to the inflexible nature of the scarring as the surgery heals which can produce a tension that pulls on the rest of the retina, which is a very delicate covering of the interior of the eye that has the width of only one third of a single layer of an onion skin.  You're going to need immediate additional surgery."

I was shocked and dazed at the doctor's words.  The surgery a week ago had hurt a lot, and the recovery so far had sucked, and it had all apparently been for naught.

"I can fit you in at noon today."  I looked at my watch, it was 11:15 in the morning, my second emergency surgery in eight days was in 45 minutes and I was there alone, as the friend at whose house I had been staying had gone to Florida for a family wedding the night before.

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