I had no idea anything was wrong until a colleague asked what had happened to my eye.
I looked in the mirror. My left eye was red, the capillaries broken. I shrugged and went off to cover that day's court cases.
The eye continued to redden. By the next night, my vision began to cloud over and the pain began. I went to a local clinic and was diagnosed with allergies, in spite of my total lack of allergy symptoms. I hoped the clinician was right and started taking three allergy meds, to no effect whatsoever.
The pain escalated. The clinician had told me to go to an eye doctor in 48 hours if my eye had not cleared up. Of course, 48 hours hit on the weekend.
By that time, I was legally blind in that eye. The pain was way beyond the touch of over-the-counter meds. I considered going to the emergency room, but figured that the chance of seeing an eye doctor in the emergency room was nil. I would wind up with a huge co-pay and another misdiagnosis.
So I endured. I waited for Monday. By Saturday, I could focus on nothing but the pain and my eye could focus on nothing at all. By Sunday, my pupil refused to respond. I felt like my eyeball was going to explode. My orbital socket hurt. My left sinus hurt. The upper left molars hurt. The pain was the type that brings nausea with it. I could hardly sleep at all.
I waited.
When I finally saw an eye doctor, he kept me in his office for more than five hours. The pressure in a human eyeball should not test above 21. Mine was 58. The pain threshold is 40. This is why I was near-vomiting with pain. He put drops in my eye to reduce the pressure, waited half an hour, tested the pressure again. Over and over. I heard the doctors whispering about me in the hallway. After several hours of this, the pressure was down to 30, the pain gone. My eyesight, however, was gone as well.
I could not see the eye chart. I could not see a letter A that stood at least 18 inches tall, even when it was an arm's length away. I was not legally blind. I was closer to totally blind in that eye. All I could see was light and shadow indoors, and outside, the world was a veil of white.
My pupil was not draining my eye as it should. The other eye would surely follow, eventually, maybe immediately. It was not a function of age or disease, but simple eye anatomy. My pupils are too close to my lenses. The only long-term solution would be to poke holes in my eyeballs to make them drain.
"Can you go to Asheville tomorrow for laser surgery?" asked the doctor. He had never seen eyes like mine before. He knew we both needed help.
For once in my life, I did not know what to say. I needed holes bored into my irises. With lasers. Tomorrow. I opted to wait.
After a few days of treatment, the bad eye gradually got better, but only to the point where looking through it is like looking through the bottom of a dirty glass that used to hold milk.
My retinal nerve may already be damaged. If that's the case, well, I still have one good eye, for now, but the left one would be a gone pecan. The doctor will probably recommend laser surgery. I will probably do it.
For the first time since I moved to western North Carolina ten months ago, I wish I were in New Orleans. Down there, all of this would have been taken care of by a world-class eye doctor on Day 1, simply because New Orleans is an urban area and medical hub.
Now I understand now difficult, how nearly impossible it can be to find adequate care in such a remote area, even with insurance and a vehicle that works and friends to help. Even the pharmacies around here had a hard time getting the prescriptions I needed.
I wrote this because of another lesson, though: when something goes wrong with your eye, do not visit the local clinic or even the closest ER. Find a real eye doctor, and go there ASAP.
Do not hesitate. Do not think about the time or the money or the inconvenience. I am healthier than most horses and 45 years old, but I was only 24-48 hours from permanently losing all sight in my left eye. Prior to this, I never had any eye problems; I barely even need glasses. I had no reason to think my eyeball would try to burst. I had no reason to worry.
Had I trusted the original diagnosis of allergies, I would be down to one good eye. Forever. And I would be completely unaware that the remaining eye was a ticking time-bomb.
Take good care of those peepers, folks.
Robbi Pounds is the staff writer for The Graham Star. She can be reached by phone, 479-3383 or by email, rpounds@grahamstar.com.