A cautionary tale

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     "Ouch!" I said, aloud, reaching for a fork at lunch a week ago Friday.
     A stabbing pain on the tip of my left index finger. I knew the reason: my project. Our front steps, replaced more than 20 years ago, are now rotting around the edges. I'd been chiseling rotten wood away, custom-making new pieces of trim, doing lots of sanding, and got a splinter in my fingertip from an old board I'd pulled out of the scrap pile. I yanked the splinter out — I thought — and kept working. But obviously some piece of it remained, embedded.

     This is what is known in literary circles as "foreshadowing."
     No biggie. Finished lunch, upstairs to the bathroom, sterilized a tweezers with rubbing alcohol, and began digging. It was a tenacious little bugger, emphasis on "little" — it was like trying to grab the period at the end of this sentence with ice tongs. I finally invoked a higher power — asked my wife to help me. She took a look, and went to find a needle. Thus inspired, I concentrated my efforts and got it out myself.
     Flash to evening.
     When I went to sleep, my eye was watering. I flushed it with Refresh eye drops, and went to bed. The next day, the problem was there, particularly when I looked at the computer. Tears streamed down my face. Maybe eyestrain, I thought — I am on the computer a lot. The weekend passed, sanding and pressing plastic wood into gaps. Then there was the 3,000-word magazine piece to read, and I read it.

     Monday, my eye was still watering, and my wife suggested maybe the problem was COVID. That's sometimes a symptom. I took one of our stack of tests. No COVID. 

     "You should have an eye doctor see it," my wife said. I phoned an opthamologist we had seen last year for our prescriptions. Her examining room was dusty and her staff shrugged the fact off when my wife pointed it out. So we weren't ever going back. But ... any port in a storm. I talked to her nurse — the next available appointment was in August, she said, recommending Refresh Gel drops to tide me over until then. 

     So off to Walgreens to get the high octane, $21 gel eye drops. They helped. The problem seemed to be going away. Then it didn't. Tuesday I phoned my primary care doctor, Dr. Gregory Wallman. His nurse was aghast when I told her about the "See you in August" reaction from the dusty optometrist's office. 

     "A doctor needs to look at that eye!" she said in a tone that made me listen to her. She gave me the name of a glaucoma center in Glenview. I phoned. It was a FAX line. It whirred, and I figured, don't bother. That was Wednesday.
     Thursday I was I was stretched out on the couch, and pressed on my eye. It hurt. That couldn't be good. I found the actual number for the Glencoe eye care center — a digit off from the FAX line. I phoned. They'd see me in two hours.
     I arrived. Lots of questions. First a form. Then a quick eye exam with a technician. I waited for nearly an hour, flipping idly through old copies of Rolling Stone. I don't know any musical celebrities anymore. This ... is a waste of time, I thought.
     Right up until the moment the opthamologist had me put my chin on a device and looked in eye. The examination took all of three seconds.
     "You have a foreign body impacted in your eye," she said, matter-of-factly. The information arrived like a fire bell.
     Oh. In all candor, some weisenheimer subsystem considered making a play on words with "foreign body." But I thought better of it. She numbed my eye and showed me a little hair's thickness cannula she intended to flick the piece of grit or splinter of whatever it was out. If that didn't work — and she didn't seem optimitic — we'd have to consider sterner measures.

     I told her I'd probably be babbling the whole time she did it — I tend to talk when medical procedures are being done to me. She said it might work better if we both were silent, and I took her hint.
     Removing the splinter took another three seconds. Done. I expressed my deep gratitude for her and went directly to Walgreens to get the two types of antibiotic drops she prescribed. Friday I stayed off the computer and gardened and the eye felt better.
     Which leads us to the moral of the story. Check stuff out. Don't wait. And be your own medical advocate. Don't spend nearly a week with a splinter in your eye. If I had been discouraged by the first opthamologist who'd have me wait until August I'd still have that crap in my eye, with scar tissue already forming around it, the doctor who actually saw me said. So all hail Dr. Wallman's nurse, whose tone in that "A doctor needs to look at that eye!" was the kick in the ass that propelled me forward. And all hail my wife, who told me to make the call. Several times. Those of us who have access to health care ought to use it when we need it, and everyone should have access to health care. It's astounding that we live in a society where they don't. And where there are people who do have both access and need but are still too inert and stupid to use it as quickly as they ought to.