The eyes have it
Thursday, November 2, 2017 at 08:45PM On the morning of the first day of a week’s holiday, I get something in my eye. Something that won’t come out, despite the usual ploys – eye drops, blinking madly in warm saline solution in an upended eyebath, peering uncomfortably under my eyelid, lying with my eye closed for a long time.
My plan for the holiday was simple: sleep, walk, read. With this thing in my eye, I could do none of these. When it was open, my eye felt okay. When closed, not so bad. But every time I blinked, it felt as though a tiny claw or piece of broken glass was scraping across my eyeball.
I rang the local medical centre – no appointments available. I popped in to the chemist, where a kind woman sensibly suggested I go to the optometrist in the next town.
Eventually, in some distress, I did just that. An optometrist, the soul of calm professionalism, sat me down, had a good look, and pulled what appeared to be a few grains of sand from under my eyelid. The relief was so heavenly, it was almost worth the extreme discomfort.
As always, when something trivial, temporary and easily fixable happens to my health, I am filled with reflections.
How incredible that even in the tiny hamlet where I was staying, there is a health professional in the next, slightly less tiny town, who was able to fix me up with no fuss and no cost, apart from paying my taxes. How surprising that I don’t get things in my eyes more often – I am so often cleaning, beach walking, burning off. How fortunate that I live in a place where I can procure spectacles perfectly calibrated to my particular eye problems. How cleverly we are made, with organs of such exquisite sensitivity that the tiniest grain of sand caught in them is unbearable, so that we are forced to look after them.
I think of all the people with compromised eye sight. People like my scholar dad who has had debilitating macular degeneration for years, but who manages still to get around and, with the help of various devices, to read. Of all the people partially or completely blind who live independently and uncomplainingly, while the rest of us whinge about the most trivial things.
I look at my eyes in the mirror, with all their wrinkles and redness and age, and think how fabulous they are, how well they have served me all these years. Long may they continue to do so.
Published in The Melbourne Age on 29 October 2017
Reader Comments (1)
Hi Claire....I do so love reading your blog when a new post comes through.....I get a little note via email....
So sorry to read about your eye issue, but so please that you were able to get it sorted out as soon as you did....there is nothing worse than something which irritates our eyes. Yes, I agree with you about just how lucky were are here in Australia as far as our ability to have our health and medical issues seen to with relatively little fuss or waiting time as compared to so many other people in this world of ours.....we are truly blessed, but, I do have to confess that this often makes me feel quite stressed and guilty especially knowing that the same advantages are just not available to so many, together with the fact that we just cannot help them. Kind thoughts Susan.