MARCH 25, 2025 – I hadn’t intended for this to be an extension of yesterday’s post, but then again, I hadn’t planned on doing something terribly stupid either. If you’re joining the party late, you’ll need to back up a step and read yesterday’s entry before you proceed any further here . . .
. . . Okay, now that you’ve been sufficiently briefed, allow me to continue . . .
This morning I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Cossack so he could examine the results of yesterday’s surgical work on my right eye. Before departing the house, I double-checked the instructions, which included a reminder to “bring the eye drop kit to your appointment.” Said kit was a very stiff, dark blue opaque Ziploc-like bag containing a small bottle of post-surgical eye drops. I’d been handed the kit upon my discharge from surgery yesterday. The kit was identical to the one I’d received after my first eye surgery two weeks ago. I was perplexed as to the need for the heavy plastic bag, which also contained a roll of tape for securing the clear plastic eye guard I’m supposed to wear for a week each night while sleeping. The bag was large enough to hold 20 bottles and multiple rolls of tape. Moreover, I wondered why the need to take the eye drops to the follow-up appointment, since I’d been instructed to administer them myself at home. Nevertheless, being the dutiful patient, I complied. I snatched the “eye drop kit” off the kitchen counter as I exited the house.
Fifteen minutes later Beth, serving as my driver, pulled up to the entrance to the four-story clinic building. There I let myself out so she could park the car. I entered the facility and headed straight for the face mask box on the counter next to the information desk. (Mostly out of habit I mask up ahead of every medical appointment, but in my defense, the medication I take to suppress any rogue multiple myeloma cells that might lurk in my bone marrow also reduces my general immunity against colds, flu, et cetera. To minimize the risk of contracting these bugs, I generally mask when I’m in crowded areas.)
As I traversed the largely empty and spacious lobby toward the stairwell (where I could easily add four flights of stairs toward my daily quota of 75), I used my right hand to wrap one strap of the mask over my right ear. With the “eye drop kit” held tightly between two fingers of my left hand, I then attempted to wrap the other strap of the mask around my left ear. EXCEPT . . .
AAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRRGGGGGG!
In one of my stupidest moves in a month, as I raised my left hand toward my face I stuck the sharp corner of the hard plastic “eye drop kit” smack dab into my left eyeball. Imagine sticking the business end of a pointed table knife into your eye just below the iris. That’s what it felt like.
Equal to the pain was my anger for having executed such an idiot move. I marched up the stairs, muttering expletives to myself. The only good news was that I was on my way to . . . my eye doctor anyway, so now he could address the issue at hand, er, rather, at eye. But this “good news” was instantly overwhelmed by the continually rebounding reminder that I had no one to blame for this improbable mishap except . . . me . . . though I did try to blame the instructions for having directed me to bring the “eye drop kit” to the appointment—and WHY? So I could poke my eye out with it and give the doctor a chance to see (pun fully intended) something about as dumb as anything a patient could present all year?
While I waited to check in, I ignored the “WAIT HERE” sign at the border of the adjoining optical facility and darted over to a countertop mirror next to a fitting station. The damage was evident by a bright red spot on the lower white of my eye. At least it wasn’t over the lens and didn’t interfere with my vision. Nevertheless, for crying out loud! How could I manage to swing that stupid plastic bag into my eye?
After hearing my story, the intake nurse proceeded with routine questions. After administering a numbing drop and measuring the pressure in the eye of yesterday’s surgical focus, I asked her to inspect the injury I’d just described to her. “Oh yeah,” she said. Her nonchalance was actually reassuring.
When she examined my left eye, I didn’t detect so much as a hint of a wrinkle of concern on her forehead. “Yeah,” she said. “you made a blood vessel a little angry.”
“Am I gonna live?” I asked, trying my best to make light of the situation.
The nurse humored me with a light chuckle and matching reply. “Oh I think so,” she said, “but I’ll have the doctor take a look at it.” I sensed no indication that I was without a parachute and standing with my bare toes curled over the window ledge of a tall building on fire.
After being distracted by a couple of eye charts, I was left to my own devices for five, maybe ten minutes. A second and more vivacious nurse then entered the room. “How are we doin’ today?” she asked cheerfully. As I soon discovered, she hadn’t been informed of my injury. She’d been dispatched to take the pressure in my left eye after the doctor had seen the omission in the report posted by the first nurse.
“Could you look at what I managed to do to my left eye?” I asked her. After she’d complied with my request I asked, “Should I jump off the ledge?”
“Ha!” she laughed, which is exactly how I was hoping she’d react. “I think you’ll be fine, but we’ll have the doctor take a look.”
After yet another 10-minute wait, the good doctor, Dr. Cossack himself, appeared. I told him my ridiculous story, to which he listened politely. He inspected the eye closely and with calming composure said, “You just bruised the surface of the eye. It might take a while for the red spot to disappear, but it’s no different from getting a slight bruise on your chest. You might have a little black and blue mark, but it wouldn’t interfere with your breathing.”
After a thorough examination of my right eye (“It’s healing just fine,” he said) and showing me a video of one of the stents after it had been implanted (“Cool!” I said), I was released on my own recognizance.
“All’s well that ends well,” as the Bard reassured. Except, due to the unanticipated mishap fpem in the lobby, I’d forfeited the opportunity to ask Dr. Cossack about the origins of his name; one suggestive of rather rough and ready ancestry wholly incongruous with a profession requiring a steady personality and fine-motor coordination. For adventures beyond the self-inflicted one by the corner of my “eye drop kit” (about which, by the way, none of the nurses nor Dr. Cossack inquired), I’d have to wait until I could return home and plunge back into the required and recommended reading about the Russian Revolution(s).
Later in the day while driving to pick up our granddaughter from school, I heard on the radio an environmentalist blasting away about the monumental global problem of plastic. “And how!” I said aloud.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
