Ugly

Apparently I am destined to be ugly for life. When I got contacts last spring, the reactions from people I know and don't know were pretty amazing. I went from being that woman that no one notices, or if they do its because she looks goofy, to being that woman that random men will flirt with for the hell of it.

I also like being able to actually see in my entire field of vision and being able to wrestle with my kids, go running or walking or biking or swimming, or even drive without having to worry about are my glasses clean, are they falling down, are they getting smashed and broken. With contact lenses, I can just exist.

I've been battling an eye infection for almost a month now, four weeks, but not quite a full month, this has been going on. I've used Tobramycin, Gentimycin, Sulfamide. I've thrown out several pairs of lenses and the case and solutions I was using when it started. I have been constantly washing sheets and pillow cases and towels so as not to infect my boys or reinfect myself.

And yet, today I woke up with my eye matted shut with gunky discharge. It being Saturday, I had the on-call doc at the general care clinic I go to paged. I told him the situation and he recommended going to the emergency room, saying not to wait to treat it until Monday.

So I go, and of course there are two heart attack patients and a kid with some bad injury in there so I wait for ever. I asked if I should come back later, but they didn't like that idea. Finally, I see a medical person. Its a nurse who takes my blood pressure in my lower arm, not level with my heart and so I showed up with a Bp pf 141/91 - and no one mentioned that was unhealthy or should be rechecked. (not why I was there, but still, it used to sit at 100/60).

So she takes a crap history (what's your medical history? Umh, with the eye? total?) I showed her the medicines I had already used and explained that this was something that had gone on for a month.

And I wait some more.

And the doctor comes in, looks at my eye and says he's going to give me a drop that will "calm that down" and that I should not wear my contacts for a few days.

And he leaves.

And then they come in with the consent for treatment form.

And then they loudly and repeatedly spell my name so that everyone in the Emergency Department knows not only that I was there, but that my first name is not spelled in the standard way.

And then the same nurse comes in the a prescription for an antibiotic. That appears identical to the one I took for this in the first place. And discharge papers that say to follow up with the eye doctor if the issue isn't better in three days.

And I leave, feeling a little stunned that I have been given yet another medication with no explanation as to what's wrong or mention of the fact that I apparently have an infection that is resistant to several powerful drugs.

So I walk home (live across the street from the hospital) and call in to talk with the original on-call guy from my clinic to see about getting a referral for a visit to a medical eye doctor, not the same as the guy who fits contacts and eye glasses. Yes, I felt like I had gotten crap care, but I didn't want to cause trouble or throw a fit, I just wanted a referral to someone who deals with eyes on a regular basis.

What I got was transferred to the house supervisor who wanted to know what was wrong. I explained about the Tobramycin and now getting a script for tobra-dex and how no one was interested cultures for my eye. And then I get put on the phone with a very defensive doctor.

Said defensive doctor then did what he should have done in person, told me that it didn't look like an infection but like chronic irritation and he suspected my contacts were the cause. He also informed me that the prescription was for a combination of torbamycin and a steroid that would knock down some of the inflammation that was causing my eye to discharge crap and my face to swell.

Great. I still want a referral to a medical eye doctor.

And I suspect I am going to be wearing glasses, nerdy, smudgy, crocked (my glasses always end up crocked) goofy glasses, for the rest of m life.

Is it too much to ask to be treated like an intelligent, educated human being by medical people? And is it too much to hope that if I can't be loved by someone wonderful, I can at least be pretty enough to get laid occasionally?

And if those two things seem mutually exclusive, you need a better imagination.