Shannon's Eyes Strike Again

If you have known me for any length of time, you are aware of the blessing/curse combo that is my pair of eyes. The blessing: they are a killer shade of blue that has been wowing viewers since 1979. The curse: everything else.

Several years ago, I want to say 2004-ish, I woke up one morning and my right eye was a bit blurry. I changed my contacts, but that didn't help. The next day my peripheral vision seemed a bit different. The next morning I no longer had peripheral vision. So I went to an ophthalmologist, who said "How long will it take you to get to Hoag? Have any plans today? When was the last time you ate?" Soon after I was in surgery getting my retina reattached. Lucky Matt had been dating me for three weeks. A month or so later I found out that my insurance, which I had called and confirmed the morning of my appointment, had been retroactively canceled. So my surgery wasn't covered, and I was suddenly $15,000 in medical debt.

My eye healed, I moved on. I've periodically had my retinas checked, and so far both are firmly in place. Today I had an ophthalmology appointment for my regular checkup. Never one to say nay to a break and a chance to spend the day with my guy, I took the whole day off.

This morning I played with my little man and did some cleaning. I tried to do my Billy Blanks Taebo Funk video, but after 10 minutes I almost passed out (yep--7:45 and it was already 80 degrees), so I quit. I got the kitchen clean, and when I got started on the bathroom I discovered that the water had been precipitously shut off. Thanks, Newport Village Apartments. Let's add this to the happy face list. I also had to call around to find out where I actually had my appointment. I kind of have two eye doctors, and since I scheduled this appointment several months ago, I couldn't remember where it was supposed to be. Fortunately, it was the one farther away from where I live.

So I had to wake Ben up from his nap to go to the doctor, and of course I couldn't wash the comet off my hands because the water was shut off. So after a baby wipe/hand sanitizer cleaning, I gently picked Ben up and headed out the door, hoping he'd sleep a little more in the car (of course he didn't). Nonetheless, he was really great at the ophthalmologist's. So good, in fact, that some strange woman came up to us and talked our ear off about him and how he compares to her grandson. The best part? She kept calling Ben (and her grandson, Ryan) "it". "Does IT crawl? Does IT eat baby food? Does IT sit up?" Now, I'm very blessed with a REALLY good kid. He behaves so well in public...for a reasonable amount of time. After 45 minutes in the waiting room, he got antsy (I don't understand why...45 minutes in a waiting room is loads of fun for adults--I can't imagine how infinitely more fun it is for a nine-month-old.). So my squirrely guy and I finally got seen by Dr. Nguyen. The good news: retinas are still attached. The bad news: I HAVE HIVES UNDER MY EYELIDS. Sick. So he gave me a prescription for some super special eye drops and sent me on my way.

I headed to Kaiser on the off-chance they will fill this prescription. (I have Kaiser for insurance, but my ophthalmologist isn't Kaiser--I have vision insurance through VSP.) Nope. I had to go to Target. So I got to Target and handed over my prescription, praying that it wouldn't cost much. I strolled through Target for 30 minutes waiting for my drops to be filled (which is great, because it's not like Ben has been confined to a stroller, car seat, and/or grocery cart for an hour and a half...oh wait). Side note: it's never a good thing for the bank account to have a half an hour to kill in Target. I didn't get much, though, which was good because the drops cost $104. Are you freaking kidding me? They had better be made of pheonix tears and permanently cure all diseases I ever have forever. Especially considering the size of the bottle (shown right).

I loaded the pheonix tears and my son in the car and headed home, deciding to go through a drive-through and get a cherry coke. I'm not a soda drinker--but I do like cherry coke from a soda fountain on a hot day. And heck, I just threw down 100 bucks on eyedrops...what's another dollar and 200 calories? So I ordered a medium soda because I'm pretty parched--it is, after all, 90 degrees. Apparently a medium soda is a trillion ounces. Many would be happy by this unexpected deal. Not me; I have this thing where I can't waste, so I had to drink the whole thing, which I didn't want to do.

A million dollars, thousands of grams of unnecessary sugar, and two hours later, I got home.

I'm going to go ahead and put this morning in the win column.