It's been a fun few days

On Wednesday I woke up with pain in my seeing eye. This was new, as everything has always been the other eye. I tried to ignore it for the day, but by that evening I knew I had to go to the doctor.

So I tried to make an appointment. The doctor that I love who has been my doctor since I was 3 is in Iran doing some sort of goodwill stuff or whatever (doesn't he know when I need him?). So they told me to go to Triage, a sort of ER for eye problems at the Moran Center. My mom came to sit with the kids, and I headed up around 2 (missing a really important Days of Our Lives, so you know I was pretty worried). I was behind a few people, so I got my glasses adjusted. That was the high point of the day.

The tech took me back for the paperwork. He started flipping through my file. I noticed that they put the 6-page-long letter of complaint I wrote about my bad experience with one of their doctors. Suddenly I was panicked wondering who knew that I had sent that and what they thought and what was said (I know they have millions of patients, but I'm somewhat of a celebrity there. I've been there since I was 2 weeks old in a clinic that is more than 90% geriatric, so I stand out. Then I was Miss Utah and had lots of problems that year. Everyone loved it. They had my poster in their break room. Really.) At one point one doctor started reading it and I just said, "That has nothing to do with this eye. Nothing in that chart has anything to do with this eye."

Anyway, that was a tangent. To make a long story longer I saw three doctors. All of which agreed that my eye looked completely normal. My only symptom was pain when it moved. And it seemed swollen in a way I couldn't describe. For FOUR hours I sat there with lights and people in my eyes with no results. They flipped my eyelid inside out a hundred times, each time managing to rip out eyelashes and somehow getting them to land in my eye. I left with a recommendation to take a steroid drop and use a warm compress and come back Monday to see another trio of doctors. They said it was likely swelling behind the optic nerve. I looked that up on the internet. I shouldn't have. It's a sign of MS. Lovely.

I didn't like their diagnosis. And it seemed like they had no idea what they were doing. So I called around and found another doctor to see me. While my mom and I waited in the room for the doctor I looked at an eye chart, pointed to a blob on it, and told my mom that was the problem. The new doctor flipped my eyelid, numbed my eye, pushed my eyeball down with a long q-tip and poked around behind my brow bone. (ouch!) He found the spot that hurt. I jumped and hollered a bit. The diagnosis: infection of the lacrimal gland (it makes tears then sends them to your tear ducts). It's very rare. He's only seen it two other times. It's not dangerous. I just have to take a ton of ibuprofen and see him Monday.

That's what I do. Anytime I see a doctor it seems I hear "This is unusual." "This happens like 3% of the time." or "I just don't know what's going on."

Anyway, the point in all of this was that for two days I had convinced myself that something terrible was happening. This pain is very similar to glaucoma. I was almost certain that I had glaucoma in my good eye. I thought of all the things I wouldn't be able to do without vision (everything), and I'm so grateful that it turned out well. And I'm so grateful for the vision I do have and what it allows me to do. I have been blessed in simple but amazing things.

And our house is done! We had our walk-through today. There were about 300 places that the paint needed to be touched up, but other than that we're just waiting to close---and thanksgiving is making that hard, but we'll close on the 30th most likely. Exactly they day we've always planned on. I can't wait to move in. The house is so beautiful, and we are so ready to have our own place.

And if you read that whole long post you must really care about me.