It's all fun and games... Part 2

Darkness.

Something was over my eye. A bandage?

Movement.

My mother is sitting in a chair to my left. She noticed I'm awake.

I'm not.

I wake up again. It's lighter now. That day is very, very fuzzy in my memory.

I don't deal well with anesthesia. In fact, it makes me sick afterwards. But I learned that I was under for about 5 hours and I spent the next day drifting in and out of consciousness. Everyone came in at one time or another to see how I was doing. The Queen had gone into work, and they told her to go home.

It was probably 10 that evening before I was cognizant enough to talk to anyone. I ate something light that the hospital gave me. I hadn't eaten, you may recall, in almost two days by this point, as the last time I'd eaten was Sunday night, and it was now Tuesday evening, but they urged me not to eat very fast since I'd gotten sick off the anesthetic. I know I talked to the Queen for awhile that evening, and while I don't remember everything we talked about, I imagine it centered around what happened.

I was in the hospital through that Friday, and in my typical fashion, I bounced back fairly quickly. By Wednesday, I was very coherent, and while I was getting drops in my eye every 4 hours, I didn't feel bad. I didn't know the true state of my eye because it was swollen shut, so trying to see if I could see was out of the question. They had to pry it open to get the drops in.

There were a couple of highly amusing incidents while I was in the hospital involving the Queen and I. While I was interred there, they loved to take my blood pressure. Seemed like they did the blood pressure more than they did the eye drops. Anyway, I probably became known for faulty readings now and then because of The Queen.

On one occasion, I was hooked up to the blood pressure deal and they had the pulse and everything going. Well, the Queen walked in, and all the readings changed. The nurse freaked for a moment, and then figured out what happened. She walked in and my heart rate jumped, so there's medical proof of her effect on me.

On another occasion, she was already in there, and they barged on in to do the blood pressure thing. Well, we'd been kissing and when they did the blood pressure, the nurse freaked again since my readings were way off. Again, though, she assessed the situation and figured it out. The Queen was no longer allowed to be around when they did blood pressure. I guess they wanted my resting rate.

After the hospital stay things move a bit quicker. There are times in a relationship where its strength is put to the test, and these next few months tested us to the limit. I had gone home, and since my bed was the top bunk of a bunk bed (yes, I was engaged and slept in a bunk bed), my parents made up the day bed in the living room so I didn't have to climb to sleep, and they could do my eye drops more easily.

I was ordered to sleep on my stomach because of something having do to with my eye, which is not normal for me. I sleep very much like a corpse -- flat on my back. Not that I stay that way on most nights, but I have been comfortable like that for quite some time.

During that first month, I went to see another doctor who was a retina specialist of some kind. He had examined me and wanted to put a gel bubble in my eye to try and re-attach the retina or at least keep it in place. I was set for another surgery at the end of the month to not only do that procedure but to do a cornea transplant, since mine was still damaged with stitches across the middle of it (yeah, how many people do you know that have had stitches in their eye?).

So under the anesthesia I went again, but in a more prepared manner this time. Got there in the morning and 10...9...8...

I woke up in I guess some kind of post-operating room in that little cramped bed. I remained semi-conscious until I was in a room with a more comfortable bed, since the only way I was able to lie on that bed was to cross my arms on my chest, which I didn't want to do. However, that wasn't the most unpleasant part of that experience...you see, I don't react well to anesthesia, and this is where I found that out with a vengeance.

I woke up, and immediately threw up. A nurse in the room got something for me to puke into, but since I hadn't eaten the previous evening, I didn't have much to throw up. This retching continued to occur until I was able to rest comfortably.

This stay was shorter than the last one. I was still getting drops every four hours or so twenty-four hours a day, and both doctors checked me out thoroughly over my brief return to the hospital, but I was quickly discharged with another bandage over my eye and a fair supply to keep it bandaged.

My eye actually stayed bandaged for most of that first three months starting with a shell over the bandages taped to my head, moving to having a patch over the bandages. When the bandages came off, I wore a patch to keep the light out of my eye so it could continue to heal.

Right after that surgery, when I was able to open my eye (it was still very swollen) I could make out some blurry objects, so I felt there was hope, but only time would tell since I really couldn't open it that well. I could perceive light differences without a problem, but without a lens and iris, would I be able to see anything?

The Queen visited as much as she could, but I was quite homebound for a little while. It's amazing how much the eyes work together so that when one of them is damaged, the other will respond sympathetically. I was actually very, very light-sensitive for 3 months after the accident and couldn't drive or anything during that time. The Queen and I never ventured far, and she always drove during that time, so our wild dates were on hold for a bit.

But she stuck with me. Some people said they wouldn't have been able to deal with such a traumatic event, especially since we were only engaged, and she could have gone at any time. We continued to talk about the coming wedding and tossed around possible dates from November of that year to the date we'd discussed earlier which was April of the next year.

An amusing aside to these three months was that Allison (bless her warped little heart) called my parents house while I was sleeping in the living room...at 1:00 in the morning. This was fortunately the last time I actually spoke with her because she was going on about how she was working in Dallas or something and knew people and told them about my work and was helping me get my stuff going (can't help but notice nothing ever came of that...oh wait, I expected that). The best part of that whole conversation was when she spouted, "if I help you with this, I'll be damned if I can't come up to you, shake your hand, and say 'good job'." So I told her, "Ok, you can come up to me, shake my hand, and say 'good job'." The conversation ended quickly after that since I wasn't very communicative with her to begin with (after all, my father was a bit miffed about being awakened at 1:00 in the morning by a phone call). And my life has been Allison free ever since...well, there were a handful of emails later, but those are another completely pointless story.

I started trying to drive after about 3 months, and it was hard to both adjust to my light sensitivity, which was getting better, and driving with one eye. My eye hadn't healed enough to know for sure whether there was any hope for it, so I was still working to do everything with monocular vision. You never really appreciate depth perception until it's gone, and with my eyesight, I had some killer depth perception. But I learned that depth perception is only good up to about ten feet. After that, everything looks about the same to everyone.

One of the changes to my behavior due to my loss of depth perception was how I pick things up. Most people just reach for something and lift it. Mine is a subtle change that most people won't notice unless I tell them outright what I'm doing. It's easier to perceive height than distance, so I lower my hand to the height of the object I want to pick up, and then move my hand towards it until I touch it. I've gotten to the point now (ten years later) that that action is imperceptable to anyone watching, but I still have to pick up things that way.

After two more months, I was getting weary of my 70% Worker's Comp pay and felt it was time to be getting back to a real job again. Now this is where I really screwed up more than just whacking my eye to begin with. You see, without depth perception, I could not reasonably work on a rooftop, so I could have and should have taken the option to be trained in something else. Should have, should have, should have.

I would have taken whatever computer classes they deemed necessary to bring myself up to speed and gotten into the industry I'm in now ten years ago. And it's not like I didn't know or wasn't told either. The Queen and her family were all suggesting it, but I felt some level of warped obligation to the fireplace boss that definitely didn't pay off at all. Oh well.