One Blind Mouse

It’s an interesting thing to be a medical mystery. My eyesight has been horrible probably since birth. My eyesight was recognized as horrible when I was four years old. I came home from the eye doctor that day with a pair of pink glasses and for a few years all was well. But my vision kept getting worse and pretty soon my lenses were almost as thick as the PB (no J) sandwiches I carried to school with me in my pink Popples lunchbox.

It was determined I had rapidly growing nearsightedness and so, at the ripe old age of six, I was given hard contact lenses which would hold the shape of my eye and hopefully reduce the speed of the degeneration.

After I got used to putting a piece of plastic in my eye every morning, I found that I liked contacts. They made me an anomaly, the only first grader to wear them. My friends’ favorite game was to look at my profile, trying their best to see the line of my contact. I knew I could always wow them with the “plunger” I used to pop the little things out of my eyes. Holding my hand three inches from my nose and telling kids, “I can see to here clearly,” always elicited “ooos” and “ahhs.”

As my eyes have continued to worsen, albeit at a much slower rate, the novelties of plungers and nearsightedness have worn off. Especially when my own eye doctor is amazed by my horrible eyesight. It always grows a patient’s confidence when her doctor looks at her chart and says, “Wow, you really can’t see, can you?”

The last time I ventured into his office and tried to order new contacts the receptionist looked at my contact brand name as if it were written in a foreign language, perhaps the one spoken by the Ewoks from Star Wars. I had to explain that the reason she hadn’t heard of them is that my contacts have to be specially ordered and custom made since the prescription is so powerful. I wasn’t sure why we were having this conversation since I’ve been coming to this office for the last twenty-two years of my life and ordering these particular contacts for at least five.

It was better than my previous attempt at ordering contacts. At one point I had decided to try a different eye doctor who came highly recommended. When I attempted to order contacts from his office, the receptionist finally called me in defeat a week later and told me I would have to order them myself. She had never heard of my brand and had exhausted all her resources trying to track them down.

These are the things we medical mysteries must deal with. Even though it is a pain at times, I always remind myself that the real mystery is the fact that I can take a flimsy piece of plastic, stick it to my eye, and my near-blindness is transformed into perfect vision. I’m grateful for that mystery. It allows me to read the obscure and unheard of brand name on the box when I’m trying to order new contacts.