Is it bedtime yet? Today was the most miserable day of my trip, even though I finally got to come home.
It started out OK: I'd mostly packed the night before, so I had my breakfast, showered, finished packing, and got my bags into the car.
I walked over to the hospital for my final appointment here. They removed the contact lens bandages and pronounced my eyes as "coming along nicely." I wasn't seeing great, but it wasn't terrible and the doc said it should get better by the hour.
My appointment ended at 9 and my flight wasn't until 3. I couldn't get changed to an earlier flight so I figured I'd hang around base until noon and then drive to the airport. In the end I wish I had driven there right away and paid whatever was necessary to change to an earlier flight.
Initially everything was alright. Blurry, but no problems. I walked over to the BX for some time-wasting and last-minute shopping. At the end of my trip there my left eye started watering a lot. By the time I got back to my car outside the room it was really hurting and I could barely keep either eye open. You know how it is with your eyes: they always want to do everything together. Every time I tried to open my right eye--which was fine--my cursed left eye tried to follow. I was getting nervous about driving back to the airport and called e for advice. Poor thing, by then she'd spent 7 days with our sweet little niece and sick little boy. Her advice wasn't very objective; it was mainly that I needed to be on that plane come hell or high water. And trust me the waves were lapping at the car door. At the end of the call I remembered that they'd given us some anesthetic drops for last resort use only. I figured my situation qualified so I dropped one in my left eye. Almost immediately I was able to open it without pain. I couldn't see that well out of it but the right eye seemed good enough so I headed out.
I'll be quite honest. As I sped along US 90 and then I-410, I kept wondering if I hadn't made a big mistake, but the farther I got from the hospital the more it seemed like I just needed to make it to the airport. There was, not surprisingly, a major accident that slowed traffic to a bare crawl for a long part of the trip, but I got past it and started getting close to the airport, just as the drops were wearing off. I barely made it into the rental lot without having to pull over and re-dose. I made it through the turn-in process and on to the van without any trouble, then spent 10 painful minutes out in the sun while the guy in front of me tried to figure out if he really had changed his flight to today or if he was going some other time. He finally realized that curbside check-in wasn't the right place to figure that out and I got to check in.
The next part was the most miserable. Let me explain that I never considered using another anesthetic drop because they told us to use that only if we were planning to go to the emergency room, and here I was planning to fly home. What came next was a pitiful-looking, red-faced man stumbling through the security line with one hand under his dark sunglasses holdng his left eye firmly shut. I was able to make it through and find my gate, but only barely. It wasn't so much needle-in-the-eye pain as great discomfort as if I had a big stone in my left eye that was irritating it and keeping me from seeing.
While I waited for the plane I started making calls. First to e to let her know I was safely at the airport. She had the great idea of telling the airline about my problem so they'd give me extra help with boarding. That turned out to be a good thing later on.
Then I tried to call the hospital because I was starting to worry that I needed to get back there for more help. It was so painful to open my eyes that I took the first San Antonio number in my call history and started complaining to them. Turns out I had called Brooks for some stupid administrative question a few days ago, and they were the first one in my call history. They did let me talk to a doc, but I needed to call the surgery center at the hospital. After the Brooks fiasco I managed to get the right number and call the clinic. The tech I spoke with sympathized but basically said I needed to gut it out and see a doc in Atlanta tomorrow if it didn't get better. I relayed this news to e and she was very relieved to be getting me home.
I felt like I wasn't getting the requisite amount of sympathy from e, understandably because she had a screaming boy and noisy girl in the background, so I decided to call my mom. I wish I hadn't because I just about brought her to tears. After calling her I wasn't done talking yet. Funny how not being able to see made me want to talk to someone almost continuously. Anyhow, I decided to call a church friend in the remote hope that they or someone else from the church would drop what they were doing and either watch the kids for e or pick me up at the airport for her. I realize now I was probably just looking for some sympathy for me, but by gosh I felt like I deserved some :-)
I called our Bible Study teacher to fill him in on my surgery. When he asked "how are you doing?" I gave him an earful. I told him e was at the end of her rope and I was blind and alone in the San Antonio Airport. Right then while I was talking about how much stress e was under, I felt the tears come up in my throat so I cut the conversation off quickly.
With all of the phone calls the time to board the plane passed fairly quickly, and before I knew it they brought me aboard. I took another drop of the anesthetic right before boarding, and that allowed me to walk to my seat without being led there. I also dry-swallowed two percocet and two benadryl in the hopes I'd sleep the whole way.
Thanks to the cramped seats and two garrulous girls next to me, I didn't sleep the whole way, but did sleep at least half the trip. I had to put in another numbing drop during the flight because my eye bothered me too much to sleep. I did one more when the deplane crowd died down a little bit, and it lasted long enough for me to get off the plane and all the way to baggage claim.
I found e a few seconds after reaching the top of the escalator. She was literally a sight for sore eyes. I lasted long enough to hug niece K and kiss MJ, then started having the same trouble keeping my eyes open. This time I had my family to help me, so I kept both eyes shut and let them lead me through the airport. I opened them occasionally to avoid hitting something or to help get/move bags, but for the most part I was a blind man.
When we got home I hit the numbing drops again so that I could see my welcome home presents: balloons everywhere, get well pictures, and a large welcome home sign that e made for me. I stayed up for a while to enjoy not being alone for the first time in 10 days, but now my eye's hurting again and I need to sleep. Against e's advice I'm taking one more drop of the anesthetic to help me fall asleep. She doesn't want me to get addicted to the drops but I need to get lots of sleep tonight. I hope things look better in the morning.
