One morning I woke up with significant blurred vision in my right eye. This must have been many years into my diagnosis because I did not freak out – like one really should if, for no good reason, one eye has ceased to see, that being its principal function. But I just spent a few minutes opening and closing the good eye, just confirming the problem and its endurance (open/blurry vision, closed/blurry blind, open/blurry vision, closed/blurry blind) and then I called my neurologist.
I went to work and adapted my way through the morning. I held on to a few more stair railings than usual and continued to open and close my good eye quite often. I guess when something occurs so randomly you expect that it might leave the same way.
At lunch time I took the subway – the “T” – to my appointment. The appointment was with a “neuro”-optomotrist in my neurologist’s same office. I had never seen a “neuro-opto” before.
It was my first Doctor’s appointment ever where I didn’t see a nurse first. The doctor came right out and got me from the waiting room. I felt special. Maybe he did that for everyone, but maybe not, so I chose to feel “special.” Of course, at the doctor’s office, special could mean es-SPECIAL-ly ill, but that’s splitting hairs.
He asked me questions about my vision and gave me the same battery of test that you get at the eye doctor’s during a vision test. Then I was sent to the nurse. So his office was more like the hairdresser’s. You see the stylist, then the shampoo girl, and then back to the stylist for the real work. Same deal here.
The nurse now took all of my vital signs. Then she told me that the doctor was going to need to do a few more specialized test (SPECIAL-ized). She would have to dilate my eyes with drops, just like a vision test, but also give me an injection of contrast dye (in my arm, not my eye, because you bet I asked) which would allow the doctor to see certain other elements of the eye.
“I have to go back to work after this. Will I be ok to do that? I have an important meeting in two hours,” I said. She said, “You’ll be fine. Your pupils will be all or mostly back to normal by then. You may just want to wear sunglasses on your way back to work. You should be out of here in an hour at the most.” Good enough.
I got dilated and contrasted, waited, appropriately enough, in the waiting room, for exactly 30 minutes while the various chemicals did their respective “things,” and was brought back to the doctor for the special tests. Honestly, the nurse overstated. They were that not that special. I was done in 20 minutes and out the door right on time. Amazing. Love the neuro-optometrist!
I stopped by the restroom on my way out. I peed and then, as I washed my hands, glanced up into the bathroom mirror. I was yellow. Yellow! Not sallow, not jaundiced … Yellow. My skin was bright yellow. Face, hands … I looked like I’d been highlighted.
I rushed back out to the front desk and asked for the nurse while searching the receptionist’s eyes for any recognition of my obvious dilemma. Nothing.
The nurse came out to the front.
“Yes?” she asked cheerfully.
“I’m yellow,” I pointed out, deadpan.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she replied, “Sometimes, in people with very pale skin, like yourself, the contrast dye can do that. It should fade by tomorrow.”
I actually had no response. What could I say. It was probably my own fault anyway. When I had asked if I would be ‘ok’ to return to work, I had failed to indicate that, for me, and maybe just me, ok-ness includes remaining the same overall color I was when I arrived.
I left, called in sick to work, and headed home, all the way wondering what she meant by “should” fade by tomorrow.
