This past Sunday, Husband and I hosted an engagement party for Son and Fiancée along with our future in-laws and it was a terrific time. Many of the couple’s east coast friends will not be able to attend their California wedding and we wanted to arrange a local celebration. And because this is also me we’re talking about, there was some preliminary drama. At 4:30 in the morning the day of the party, I awoke with my left eye red, tearing and gluey and I stared at myself in the mirror imagining how splendid I would look greeting guests with a sign around my neck that said Conjunctivitis Woman, Hug at Your Own Risk. I went online immediately to troll for home remedies and I found a ton of them, all ending with See A Doctor.
The prelude to the eye thing was the arm thing. On the Friday before the party I decided to bake banana muffins (someone please smack me if I ever tempt fate like that again) and while sliding the muffin pan into the oven I somehow let go of the oven door too soon with my other hand causing the muffin arm to get slammed by the burning hot oven door. After prancing around the kitchen waving my smoking arm in the air and cursing in what sounded to me like Farsi, I ran to the computer and looked up burn remedies. I compared the ugly rising red welt on my arm to the Google images and realized I would need a long-sleeved jacket over my sleeveless dress along with the warning sign around my neck. Rock on.
Fortunately, the party venue was highly air-conditioned and my Jemma Kidd eye makeup perfectly disguised whatever eye issue was going on. I desperately tried not to let people kiss me when they entered saying I thought I was coming down with something, but nobody heard me because they were too busy burying their face in my hair and squeezing my burnt arm with an excitement that brought tears to my good eye. Even with all that, it was far and away one of the best times I’ve ever had and just the greatest day and I wouldn’t change a thing.
The next morning I made an appointment with my quirky ophthalmologist, the one I wrote about in City Serenade, who once cleared a blocked tear duct by threading a needle into my sinus through the inside corner of my eye with no anesthesia. In retrospect, he was probably counting on me passing out so why sedate me? When I called his office this time they couldn’t locate my record and I realized later that I should have had them check under my first married name. I hadn’t been there in over a decade proving that once Dr. B clears a tear duct, it stays cleared. By the time I arrived later in the day my record had been found.
DR. B: (looking at my chart and shaking his head) I can just barely recall you. You were here last in 1996. And now you’re back?
OSV: Something’s wrong with my eye. You’re my ophthalmologist.
DR. B: (amused) I am? How did you even remember me after sixteen years?
OSV: You’re pretty memorable. The last time I was here you stuck a needle in my eye.
DR. B: Is that why you stayed away so long?
OSV: I had to go into therapy. I kept reliving it.
DR. B: I’m flattered.
After a thorough examination, the doctor returned to studying my chart.
DR. B: The last time you were here you had a different last name.
OSV: I remarried.
DR. B: (without looking up) What happened to the first one?
OSV: I don’t want to take up your time; you have patients waiting.
DR. B: Let me guess. He was an asshole.
OSV: No, he was a doctor.
DR. B: Just what I said. We’re all assholes.
OSV: Is that what your wife would tell me?
DR. B: Ask her on your way out. She’s right at the front desk.
OSV: I’ll catch her next time.
DR. B: (handing me a prescription) You come every sixteen years. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait.
OSV: Would this conjunctivitis have gone away by itself?
DR. B: Eventually everything goes away.
OSV: Isn’t that called death?
DR. B: (nodding slowly) Now I remember you.
OSV: Hey, while I’m here, would you take a look at something on my arm?
DR. B: Only if it’s an eye. Take care now.
Daughter’s Fotos are once again Destination: Caribbean
