What's That Growing In Your Head?

For various reason, none of them having to do with common sense or regular health care checks I went to a neuro-ophthalmologist so that I could get an official letter which says in short "She really, really, really can't see worth a damn. She has not been faking for 54 years so cut her a break."

I HATE going to the eye doctor. I have a rare genetic condition so they always get all excited, put me through a multitude of test to prove yet again that my vision is laughable, charge me an arm and a leg, demand follow-ups and gleefully rub their hands together in a Simon Legree sort of way while they say "Whoa Nelly, your eyes are horrible and there is no fix. Sucks to be you!" If I hadn't needed the letter for work I would have happily gone on, staying in familiar places and firmly holding on to my seeing eye people for the next forty or so years.

I arrived begrudgingly, agreed to a test that maps one's vision with a curt nod, sat in a horribly uncomfortable chair with my chin in a cup and my head in their machine and waited for tiny lights to start zooming around, clicker in hand. When you see a light, you click the button. This is simple.

The woman helping me was sweet and quiet for a minute and then asked did I not see any at all. 

"What? What? You started?"
"Just click the button when you see the light flash."

Crap. No lights, I stare straight ahead willing the little points of light to appear. As if by magic three or four bright flashes appear in a row, top left, click click click. Then, nothing.... 

Quick! three or four bright flashes appear in a row, bottom right! Click click click.... I do an extra click just in case I miss counted.

Nothing! I can't cheat since I do not really know where or when the flashes will appear, but I would, if I could. Test over. The lady is now smiling at me with a touch of pity. 

"You did real well."

Liar! I want to beg to do it again. I stare balefully at the machine, sitting there like a piece of modern sculpture, taunting me. I want to cry.

The last time I did this test the map it made of my eyes looked like a target, circles of no vision radiating out like waves from the center. This time it looks like a butterfly, with the wings and body having no vision at all. It looked bad, and dark and absolutely terrifying to me.

My vision sort of resembles this Rorschach ink blot

The doctor, wasting no time, not being gleeful and not rubbing his hands together says, "Yep, you definitely have  genetic neuro-scatomatas. HOWEVER..." 

I feel myself shrinking.

"Usually when we see this 'tubing' it is caused by something pressing against the optic nerves"

I shrink more. I feel like I am six.

"Usually an enlargement of the Pituitary glad. Maybe surgery is an option. We can't fix the genetic defect (No shit Sherlock) but sometimes reducing the pressure can help to return the vision to it's pre-swelling state."

I feel like a toddler walking out, lost and alone, looking for my sister who has driven me here. Everybody in the waiting room is acting like nothing has changed. Everybody in the waiting room is reading, toe tapping, finger drumming, waiting to get their new prescription and get in their cars and drive off into their normal life. 

The right side of my brain is saying "This is bad, this is serious, this is NOT GOOD" The left side of my brain is saying "Oh look! A butterfly! (Here the left brain shrieks and makes an about face. I suddenly do not like the looks of butterflies) I want a cookie, maybe a couple of dozen. Isn't the sun nice! What shall we cook for dinner? I like red, it is such a pretty color. That machine has a nice rhythm. Doodly doo doo doo doo doo."

By the time I got home my right brain was speaking in a much firmer tone of voice... "THIS IS BAD, THIS IS SERIOUS, THIS IS NOT GOOD!" and the left side had retreated into a corner, fingers in ears saying "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you" but had given up the good fight. I turned to Dr. Google and looked up swelling in the pituitary.

I read a lot of articles, spending roughly three hours on different sites but the end result was always the same. TUMOR TUMOR TUMOR. Oh crap and eff me.

The good news? Tumors in the pituitary are self contained, not malignant. Bad news they can only be treated by radiation or surgery, and the underlying cause can be treated, sometimes, depending on what it is. I was not a happy camper.

I am having two MRIs this Monday, one with contrast, one without. I am hoping (Yes, with my left brain) that this has all been a giant scare and that the next time I take the test from hell I will once again have lovely targets of blindness and the evil tubing will be gone. Wish me luck!

The Joy of Finding Stuff

I haven't been in this house long. I come in from the outdoors where I feel totally at home and find myself in some strange twilight world surrounded by boxes and barrels and bags. A haphazard maze beckons me with its mystery. Should I go left and open a neat clean box, taped carefully, unlabeled as are most of the rest, or should I cut apart the twine holding together the handles of the Disney Store bag and see what delightful possessions are making it bulge? Should I cut through the layers and layers of tape holding together a box which has been used to hold goods many, many times, its various labels, handwritten or printed by machine overlapping each other, black, red, blue, white and green looking delightful and happy together? I see a box that had held a space heater, a piece of masking tape over the bright image and lettering factory printed on the box saying only, teasingly, "STUFF". I WANT STUFF! I NEED STUFF!

Hang on now, what if it just that, just STUFF, nothing worth naming specifically? Perhaps the contents of the junk drawer in the kitchen, the paper clips, rubber bands and expired coupons, picture hangers and batteries (dead or alive? who knows but I can't throw them away), box tops and marbles and shoe strings and nail clippers and stubby pencils and dried up pens and mysterious phone numbers on the backs of envelopes or the cleaning supplies and extra rolls of paper from under the washroom sink. Maybe it is even worse STUFF, like crap I swept into a dustpan from the garage floor? Screws and nails and bits of wire and nuts and bolts and teeny Allen wrenches and dust and wire nuts and fish hooks and, well, you know, STUFF? I thought I had labeled those boxes GARAGE STUFF but I admit it. I am a slack labeler. I may not have gotten the word GARAGE on there at all.

Maybe it is personal STUFF. Knitting needles and yarn from my bedside table. Massage lotion (that's right, I said it, I ain't skeert), the book I was reading before the move which seems to have disappeared, six keys that go to God knows what, but when I find whatever it is I am sure it will be locked. A coin from Panama, where I have never been, a china dog my youngest daughter gave me when she was seven. Some loose Tums and Motrin PMs, 3 unmatched socks and a back scratcher. All of these things should be in a box somewhere, labeled PERSONAL STUFF but I haven't found it yet. Maybe I am just mis-remembering and it just said STUFF, or, knowing me, had no label at all.

I pick up the box and shake it. I can feel something heavy and off balance shifting, I hear rattling of copper and tinging of tin and silent noise of plastic bending.

I am doing it! I am opening this box next. I can't wait! I am getting my STUFF back! I slice open the tape, giving myself an adhesive rimmed paper cut in the process, I rip the flaps open and what do I see? Random freaking stuff, not STUFF like I had hoped but regular old running around while they loaded the truck picking up mismatched and forgotten items and tossing them in a box stuff. Two plastic coat hangers, a windbreaker, a Christmas ornament, a pot lid, a dust pan, a wonderfully silly tall top heavy metal sculpture of a frog, the key card for the community pool and the key to the large ornamental gas fireplace at the rental house. Two back issues of Southern Living and a wash cloth pad a cheap vase and one shoe sits sadly in the bottom.

Next time I am going for the bag...

Them Bucks Will Gut You

I love to catch little snatches of other people’s (men’s) conversations. This gives me an insight into their (men’s) lives, an idea of what they are going through, what is important to them, their dreams and ambitions and, on occasion, reminds me of just how stupid we all sound sometimes.

My favorites bits are snagged in bars…. Picture this: Two men and a beautiful woman sitting at a local bar, waiting for their food order to be delivered to their table. Quite a few beer bottles sit empty if front of both men and the lovely lady, evidently the designated driver is on her second sweet tea. Both men are 35 and just a bit pudgy, both in uniforms of some type, both with sturdy steel toed boots and multiple phone and tool pouches on their belts. One’s hair is a tad too long, a mullet slicked back with something a little too shiny and is clean shaven and one has the redneck-hip bald head and goatee. One’s shirt is white button-up (with one too many buttons loosened at the collar), one’s shirt is uniform blue. Both are wearing too much cologne, splashed on hastily in the car to make up for the fact that they couldn’t shower before coming out to play. Pool cues lean against the edge of the table and the wall and a tumbled pile of quarters sits next to the cardboard centerpiece advertising Texas ‘Rita Tuesday. There isn’t much about them that grabs my attention; the place is full of tables exactly like this enjoying the requisite Redneck Top 40 playing on the jukebox. Then I catch one line, one small phrase that makes me wish I had listened to more of their conversation… White button-up slick mullet dude—“If I could do anything I would be an international arms dealer, now they have it made”

God, sometimes I wish I were a guy.

Not surprisingly at the same bar (but at a different table) sit what is sure to be the same threesome 30 years hence. 65 year old slick back (waaayyyyy back, damn hairline) mullet dude in white button up with one too many buttons undone, cracker-no-longer-hip, just-bald-dude with scraggly chin hair, blowsy lounge lizard with smeared lip stick, no longer the designated driver so drinking Long Island Ice Teas sit on a Sunday afternoon discussing the liqueur they seem to have just discovered. Same dude, still wishing to be more macho exclaims—“Seriously, they put buck blood in it, makes you a love stud, but you cain’t drink it during hunting season, them bucks will gut you”

I worked in a cafeteria for a while, baking all day, which was fabulous. There was a man of Hispanic origin, I have no idea from whence he hailed, who was the master baker. He was contemplating proposing to his current girlfriend so the kitchen conversation revolved repeatedly around that subject. Through bits and pieces I gleaned some interesting facts. He had been married four times, yes I meant 4 times, before and had over a dozen children. He could not have been more than 35. He came in on a Friday and whipped out a jewelry box with a very lovely, though teeny diamond in it. With a flourish and a bow he exclaimed he was going to do it, he was taking the plunge, but—“5 times is enough, man, if this doesn’t work out that’s it! No more commitment for me”

I was the only woman who worked in the kitchen and therefore, not surprisingly, the only one who found that statement horribly ironic and funny. I wasn’t included in the conversation but burst out laughing only to have the other staff look at me like I had flown off my rocker, laughing to myself like a ninny, and was given a wide berth all day.

At one point in time, I had a co-worker in the cube-farm I currently inhabit 8 hours or more a day who seemed to believe that 5 foot high walls that only surround you on three sides made him both invisible and silent. Most of what was overheard was just gross: nail clipping, nose snuffling and loogie hocking, farts of amazing volume and velocity, but some of it was an intriguing look into the mind of a man. One morning he had a woman I will choose to assume was his wife on the phone and kept trying to steer the conversation around to how magnificent he had been in the bedroom the night before. Finally, after being shot down repeatedly he wailed—“I know you don’t like to do it, or watch it, but can’t we at least TALK about it? I mean, Jesus! I rocked”  Wow.

Another co-worker gave me food for thought when the economy took a nose dive and making promises of slashing government payrolls became the popular way to garner votes. This co-worker seemed immune to the tension flooding through the floors of our high-rise, going on about his merry way without a care in the world. Standing out smoking one day a fellow civil servant asked him how in the world he could stay so calm about it all when the rest of us were updating our resumes and calling in old favors. His reply?—“They can’t fire me, I mean, they can, but they won’t, I’m gay”

I totally get the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus idea. In these instances a women might be overheard saying “If I could do anything I wanted I would be Angelina Jolie, now she has it made” but more likely you would hear “I would so do Brad Pitt” We would have talked about how the liquor made us warm and toasty, the thought of being gutted by lusting-for-revenge horned animals never entering our minds. “That bastards been married four times and asked you what?” would have been our response to the disclosure of the proposal, “run me a bath, pour me wine and light candles and I might rock you again” would have been our side of the conversation on the telephone in the cube farm. As far as not worrying about losing one’s job…… with a husband, 3 children producing 9 grandchildren I don’t think the gay thing will fly but I am working on other options……