Anyone else seen the new Gap commercial for Xmas, where they’re trying to get you to buy happy stripey things? And they’re all dancing around and singing something like “people all over the world, join hands, start a love train, love train…” Just sounds kinda dirty…

Strange night tonight, doing laundry and trying to get my crap together to find a new eye guy in Oshkosh… I wish it was like going to the dentist, where as long as you took really good care of your teeth you could skip going the recommended every 6 months or so.

With the bad eye I have to go all the time because stuff might be breaking inside there that I can’t see, and that really chaps my hide and is a little scary. I think that’s why the eye feels like it’s coming up in conversation so much lately – it’s not that anything new and gross is going on, it’s more like I have to find a new eye doc and that bites.

So obviously I feel like writing sick stuff about my bad eye.

It’s not a feel sorry for me thing, it’s a hey, if you’re interested in how it happened this is it.

The central serous retinopathy that started the whole thing is stress related. It’s not surprising, at the time I had moved back home where a divorce between my parents was finalizing and I was working 60 hour weeks. Start at 7am at data entry, move on to the B.B.V. (blockbuster video) between 2-3pm, go to bed at 1am, rinse, repeat. So I started seeing a dark spot, which was the retinopathy thing. The doc hit it with a laser, and pow, everything seemed fine. About 4-6 months later I started seeing a new dark spot in a different area. The doc hit that with a laser, too. Again, it seemed like all was well. Then my vision in the left eye started to get worse – turns out it just healed really badly. The small scar tissue from the first surgery and the small scar tissue from the second had mutated and grown together into a big fat uglee mass of scar tissue that crossed over the center of my eye, causing my central vision to be nonexistent.

Because things in my eye were being moved around, pushed, pulled, whatever from the scar tissue, other gross stuff happened. There’s a piece called the vitreous that broke off and just floats around in there – which is in itself is pretty normal, just in much much older people.

Last November I noticed new, much smaller blind spots. Nothing’s being done with those because my eye healed so abnormally the last time. My eye guy did notice some swelling and cysts on the retina and optic nerve, so he sent me to another eye guy. That eye guy sent me to get an mri to see if I had any brain tumors. (Should’ve saved us all some time and told him about my missing brain…)

Had a ton of bloodwork, was tested for, and I quote Dr. Sadun here, “rare and weird diseases.” Some of them had weird freaky names made up of letters and numbers, like they found so many diseases they didn’t have time to give them all proper names, and others were good for a laugh. I’ll have you all know that yay, I tested negative for syphillis.

Since everything came back negative that doc sent me to another doc, who decided to give me a shot in the eye. It felt really really weird. They numbed my eye beforehand, so you don’t have any pain, just the pressure change when the steroids get pushed into the eye. That’s right, for one day my eye could’ve beat up anyone on the block. I had this little cartoon going through my head all the time about my eye pulling me along as it wreaked havoc on Orange County, robbing liquor stores and such because it was angry and on steroids.

Since then it’s been all observational visits. Nothing new and gross, just old and gross. It’s not anything that’s really bad – just annoying. The worst part is I’m legally blind in my left eye and I can’t get a handicapped placard. Where’s the love!?!?!?

So I’m really going to bed now. Go to the Gap, buy something stripey.