Detachment
If anyone had thought to ask me two weeks ago, I would have told them that the saddest words in the English language are "empty hotel room." I enjoy being Carmen San Diego--the corporate overlords who sent me out to Washington DC to give a talk at a think tank were pleased enough that they would like me to put on a repeat performance in January--but it is lonely at night. I miss J and my cats.
If anyone had thought to ask me two weeks ago, I would have told them that the happiest words in the English language are "octopus skirt," followed closely by "psychokinetic flame-thrower." And if anyone had thought to ask me any of these questions a few days later, I would have answered by punching them repeatedly in the face while screaming, "None of that fucking matters because my goddamn retina has just come off."
If you are like me, you probably did not know this was an option--that you could be fine one day and the next your retina might start peeling off of the back of your eyeball, causing total blindness. I thought that your retina might detach if you are hit in the head, or if you are very old and kind of falling apart anyhow. No kindly optometrist ever thought to mention, "Oh, by the way, I see that you are severely myopic. Did you know that you might just spontaneously go blind and there is nothing you can do about it?" This is probably for the best. I would have just lost a lot of sleep and my retina would have detached anyway.
These are all things I did not know, staring at myself in the mirror in the bathroom of a fancily-remodeled building with a genuine turret on the campus of the University of Toronto, where I was meeting with researchers to finish a report about Syria we'd be stalled on for months. I was washing my hands when I noticed that my left eye was hugely dilated, while my right eye was perfectly normal. And while I stared at my weird saucer-like pupil, my left eye seemed to have trouble focusing. I could watch it pull to the left, then back to center, then wander off to the left again.
I retreated to the turret and worked on my report. I worked and I worried a bit, because I vaguely recalled that there were all kinds of neurological problems that began with dilating pupils. I may have looked some of them up. When my head began to ache, I don't remember what I blamed my headache on. I went out for Korean food with security researchers. I had drinks in the hotel bar. I tried to make polite conversation with these people that I did not know very well. I tried so hard that I could not tell you what time it was when I noticed that a shadow had crept over my vision. If I looked through my left eye, it looked as if somebody had taken a bite out of the top right-hand quadrant of the my vision, and where it was bitten off, everything was grey.
I was perhaps not as attentive as I could have been on the second day of my meeting at the University of Toronto. I left a message for my doctor, three times zones behind me. I made polite noises. I nervously Googled things. I gazed at the University football field through my left eye. The grass turned blue and the yardlines warped. It was lunchtime when my doctor called me and confirmed that it was serious. I looked up the best emergency room in Toronto, made hasty excuses to people I did not really know who had paid to bring me a long way to do work I was now ducking out on, and took a cab to Mount Sinai.
Up until then, I had never been to an emergency room. If you are an American and you should find yourself in need emergency care in Canadia, do remember to bring your credit card. I hope you can afford to pay $600. After this, my memory becomes a little unreliable. It's hard to remember who is a doctor and who is a nurse, who is doing triage and who is a specialist. They made me take out my contact lenses, which meant that I could not see out of either eye for the majority of the next six hours. The inside of Mount Sinai Hospital is very, very blurry. It is mostly full of people who make me wait for long periods in hallways and people who shine increasingly bright lights in my eyes and still cannot see my goddamn retina. It is dinnertime before I am in a blurry room with a real opthamologist (shadowed by a real medical student), who spends the better part of an hour prodding at my eye before announcing that she sees "macular folds." I wait another hour while she calls in a more senior opthamologist, who tilts my head back, shines a light in my face and says flatly, "Your retina is detached."
I explain that I have to be in Seattle on Friday. Then Brussels. Then Las Vegas.
The senior opthamologist explains that there are several different kinds of surgery that can be employed to repair my retina, but the most common one will require me to lie face down for a week, and then prohibit me from airplane travel for the next several months.
Can this wait a few weeks until I get back to San Francisco? I ask stupidly.
"If this was my eye, I would get surgery tomorrow. I have booked you a consultation with a surgeon at another hospital for 9 am tomorrow morning," says the senior opthamologist like a senior opthamologist.
I go back to the hotel. I have a fancy steak dinner with a table full of people I don't know very well and hope they do not notice that I am mostly terrified. I make my excuses early, return to my hotel room, and cancel all the rest of my engagements. I book the next flight to San Francisco, which costs me an additional $900. I wistfully remember a time when I was outraged over a $175 laundry bill. It is almost 5 am before I fall asleep. I hardly spend any of that time crying and hyperventilating.
If anyone had thought to ask me two weeks ago, I would have told them that the happiest words in the English language are "octopus skirt," followed closely by "psychokinetic flame-thrower." And if anyone had thought to ask me any of these questions a few days later, I would have answered by punching them repeatedly in the face while screaming, "None of that fucking matters because my goddamn retina has just come off."
If you are like me, you probably did not know this was an option--that you could be fine one day and the next your retina might start peeling off of the back of your eyeball, causing total blindness. I thought that your retina might detach if you are hit in the head, or if you are very old and kind of falling apart anyhow. No kindly optometrist ever thought to mention, "Oh, by the way, I see that you are severely myopic. Did you know that you might just spontaneously go blind and there is nothing you can do about it?" This is probably for the best. I would have just lost a lot of sleep and my retina would have detached anyway.
These are all things I did not know, staring at myself in the mirror in the bathroom of a fancily-remodeled building with a genuine turret on the campus of the University of Toronto, where I was meeting with researchers to finish a report about Syria we'd be stalled on for months. I was washing my hands when I noticed that my left eye was hugely dilated, while my right eye was perfectly normal. And while I stared at my weird saucer-like pupil, my left eye seemed to have trouble focusing. I could watch it pull to the left, then back to center, then wander off to the left again.
I retreated to the turret and worked on my report. I worked and I worried a bit, because I vaguely recalled that there were all kinds of neurological problems that began with dilating pupils. I may have looked some of them up. When my head began to ache, I don't remember what I blamed my headache on. I went out for Korean food with security researchers. I had drinks in the hotel bar. I tried to make polite conversation with these people that I did not know very well. I tried so hard that I could not tell you what time it was when I noticed that a shadow had crept over my vision. If I looked through my left eye, it looked as if somebody had taken a bite out of the top right-hand quadrant of the my vision, and where it was bitten off, everything was grey.
I was perhaps not as attentive as I could have been on the second day of my meeting at the University of Toronto. I left a message for my doctor, three times zones behind me. I made polite noises. I nervously Googled things. I gazed at the University football field through my left eye. The grass turned blue and the yardlines warped. It was lunchtime when my doctor called me and confirmed that it was serious. I looked up the best emergency room in Toronto, made hasty excuses to people I did not really know who had paid to bring me a long way to do work I was now ducking out on, and took a cab to Mount Sinai.
Up until then, I had never been to an emergency room. If you are an American and you should find yourself in need emergency care in Canadia, do remember to bring your credit card. I hope you can afford to pay $600. After this, my memory becomes a little unreliable. It's hard to remember who is a doctor and who is a nurse, who is doing triage and who is a specialist. They made me take out my contact lenses, which meant that I could not see out of either eye for the majority of the next six hours. The inside of Mount Sinai Hospital is very, very blurry. It is mostly full of people who make me wait for long periods in hallways and people who shine increasingly bright lights in my eyes and still cannot see my goddamn retina. It is dinnertime before I am in a blurry room with a real opthamologist (shadowed by a real medical student), who spends the better part of an hour prodding at my eye before announcing that she sees "macular folds." I wait another hour while she calls in a more senior opthamologist, who tilts my head back, shines a light in my face and says flatly, "Your retina is detached."
I explain that I have to be in Seattle on Friday. Then Brussels. Then Las Vegas.
The senior opthamologist explains that there are several different kinds of surgery that can be employed to repair my retina, but the most common one will require me to lie face down for a week, and then prohibit me from airplane travel for the next several months.
Can this wait a few weeks until I get back to San Francisco? I ask stupidly.
"If this was my eye, I would get surgery tomorrow. I have booked you a consultation with a surgeon at another hospital for 9 am tomorrow morning," says the senior opthamologist like a senior opthamologist.
I go back to the hotel. I have a fancy steak dinner with a table full of people I don't know very well and hope they do not notice that I am mostly terrified. I make my excuses early, return to my hotel room, and cancel all the rest of my engagements. I book the next flight to San Francisco, which costs me an additional $900. I wistfully remember a time when I was outraged over a $175 laundry bill. It is almost 5 am before I fall asleep. I hardly spend any of that time crying and hyperventilating.