The "Eyes" Have It

I have been having "fun with my face" this week. If you have been hanging around this place in the woods very long you may remember that I also had fun with my face last January. Well, what smote my left eye last winter came out of hibernation to smite my right eye on Friday evening. We were with our church family at Busch Stadium watching the Cardinals play the Padre's ... I mean the Pirates ... and having a great time. Never mind that I really thought we were playing the Padre's until the 7th inning when someone pointed out that I kept saying "Padre's" when I should be saying "Pirates." Well hey, I wasn't watching the game. I was talking and eating and doing the important things that Cub fans do at ballparks in August. I really did think it was the Padre's way down there. But that's not important. Somewhere around the 5th inning I looked up towards the lights on top of the stadium and ...oops ... some huge weird shaped spider web like thing floated in front of my right eye. Crud. I knew immediately what had happened. I covered my eyes with my hands and turned my eyeballs real fast from the right to the left. Yep. I saw "lightening" on the right part of my right eye. This is technically called a "post vitreous detachment." Or so I assumed. I didn't want to ruin a perfectly beautiful evening so I only mentioned it to the person sitting next to me (Hi, Diana!) and my wife, Debbie. There's not much you can do with this. You just deal with it and it begins to calm itself down after about 6 months. The problem is in making sure that a post vitreous detachment is really what is wrong. Because it also could be a torn or detached retina. And if you don't jump on that quickly, well, you just flat out go blind. And that's not a good option. I still own DVD's that I haven't watched. That's why I found myself at the ophthalmologists office yesterday at 10AM. I might mention that ophthalmologists hate me. They like to hold me down in the big chair and TOUCH MY EYE BALL. And if I have one motto in life it is simple and clear ... "Touch my eye and die." I broke my rule but only because Debbie wouldn't let me go rogue. So they squirted this stuff in my eyes to make them dilate. This basically makes you pretty much blind anyway so I wasn't sure why I was even in the office in the first place. It opens your iris all the way so that light can just dance its way in and have its way with you. And after the iris is all the way open they take out these lights that are pretty much borrowed from the sun and the focus it directly into your eyes. Rob Bell says there really isn't a hell. Rob Bell has never had this experience. But because you are a big boy you don't grab the doctor by the throat, strangle him, and hide his body behind the dumpster. But you want to. Yesterday Dr. Brilliant couldn't see all of my retina because there was too much "debris" inside my eye. He really said that. I have debris inside my eye. I thought debris was what you found in the wake of a tornado or perhaps a nuclear mishap. But I have it inside my eye. And because Boy Wonder couldn't see behind the debris he got his magic Q-Tip and began poking ON MY EYE. He was trying to make the debris move away so he could tell if my retina was torn. Or perhaps he was trying to tear my retina himself. I couldn't really tell. But either way he failed. So I had to go to a retina specialist today. Actually, I think these two guys are room mates. I believe one sets the patient up and the other slams him the next day. It took two highly educated brainiacs to tell me that I didn't have a hole in my head. Well, at least not in my retina. Thanks, boys. The next yachts on me. Now I can resume living. I can read and watch TV and follow the bouncing ball with both eyes. I can do everything but get kicked in the head by a mule or take up sumo wrestling. And that's a real shame because I was really wanting to sumo wrestle a mule. It will have to wait 6 months when I go back for final clearance and the opportunity to pay off the doctors condo on Maui. So it's been a good week over all. Things float around in my field of vision in both eyes. That's kind of fun because I play games with them, trying to get the tangled up with each other or trying to spell Albuquerque with them. It's really cool to do that when I'm driving. Even cooler when I'm texting and driving. Coolest of all when I'm texting, driving, and have dilated eyes. And in the dark I have lightening inside of my head. When I turn my head really fast or my eyes really fast. Now think about this. Once you discover this fact ... how hard do you think it is to resist making it lightening every 15 seconds or so? It's nearly impossible. I have the power over lightening. I'm still working on the thunder. Oh. And I'm not going blind. So there's that. But dude, when I paid ... I didn't even get a sucker.