Idiopathic Idiot

Oiy, I must be hungover. But it was just one little wine cooler—I shouldn’t be hungover.

My eyes are killing me, though. Look left, and it stabs. Look right, and it stabs. Up and down stab, too. There’s a dull ache behind them. It hurts so bad, I’m thinking about calling into work. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a solid seven. Anything above a six for me is pretty bad. What’s a ten? A ten means I’m in the hospital.

This isn’t there yet.

Better not get there.

I can’t afford for it to get to a ten.

Just drink some water, have a coffee—maybe a lot of coffee—eat something, and get your butt to work. You have a job to do and no one to fill it.

My finger lingers over my boss’s number, anyway. Despite the fact it’s two-thirty in the morning.

The chances of this pain lasting is minimal. Give it a few hours and it will probably go away. I can handle a couple hours in pain, right? Just a couple hours. No biggie.

Putting my phone down on the lumpy bed, I go to my clothes under the bed—yes, they stay under the bed in containers instead of the dresser or closet—and grab a matching set of scrubs that are beginning to get baggy. I’ve been losing weight. Twenty pounds, by the way. Not too shabby. I’ve really let myself go the past couple years, being so stressed out and so busy. Taking care of three kids by myself, one with special needs, and working a high-stress, high-demanding job of dialysis while trying to get your husband from one country to yours is no easy feat. My exhaustion got the better of me, and I stopped eating right and exercising.

Stupid me.

Now, I suffer the consequences. Slightly elevated blood pressure, stiff muscles, achy joints, and too much junk in the trunk.

Things should never have gotten this far, but they did, and all I can do is my best to get back on track.

So I started running. Started eating…less. Maybe not better, yet. Man, I love chocolate and fried chicken. And I almost quit drinking. Up until a couple months ago, I used it to help me sleep, but got tired of not being able to wake up and being late for work a couple times, so I went down to once a week.

Now, I can’t sleep without a dose of melatonin. And I wake up every time something so much as breathes the wrong way in the house. But at least I can hear the kids now. When they call me, have a bad dream, or just need their mom. It’s worth quitting drinking for. I’m a heck of a lot less tired now, too, since not drinking.

Anyway…

I put the phone away and step on the scale to weigh myself. I won’t tell you what that scale says, it’s embarrassing. But it’s down twenty pounds from my starting point, and that’s all you need to know.

I smile at the downward trending numbers. Just a…lot more to go, but I’m getting there. Progress is progress, and being too hard on myself will only make it harder.

After smiling, I throw on my loose scrubs, make my coffee, have a short Bible and prayer moment, then head out the door with a hot tumbler in hand.

But when I get into the car, I have to grip the steering wheel to get through the pain in my eyes. I looked too far one way, and I have to concentrate on my breathing until the sharpness passes. It lasts longer than I like. A minute. Maybe two.

Two is too many. Let me tell you! The pain is literally stabbing—like someone takes a knife and cuts you in your eye. And the incessant ache behind it makes it feel like someone is trying to push my eyeballs out. Even though they’re the prettiest thing about plain-jane me, a pale but bright blue that reminds me of crystal, yet sometimes look grey like when the sky is about to rain.

Not every day is like this. Most of the time, I live pain free.

Some days are like this.

No.

Some days are worse.

When the pain subsides, I let loose my held in breath and turn on my car. There’s no time to dawdle. In about thirty minutes, there will be patients walking through that door, expecting me to get their needles in their arms and on their machines. Pronto.

Rushing, as I always do, I zoom backwards out the driveway, relying completely on my rear-view cameras under the license plate. At now three in the morning, there’s not much point in me being precarious. How many people are out at that time? And if they’re out, they’re up to no good, anyway, right? How about five points if I hit the black man dressed in all black (okay, don’t get me started on being racist because many people I love are dark skinned and I know it’s okay to call a black person black, like calling a ghost-white redhead a ghost-white redhead). What about three points for the rabbit that decides to run back and forth until the last minute when I think I get its tail?

No.

Kidding.

I don’t play those games.

When I turn the corner, I hear my tires screech.

Oops.

I really need to work on not being so rushed all the time. My car can’t take much more speeding and quick, hard brake work.

Then I turn the last corner, pulling into the work parking lot. There’s no screech this time. Three other staff are already here: Sasha, Milly, and Andy. Sasha opened, Milly is a middle tech, and I’m the closing tech.

Yipee.

The sharp pain returns as I open my car door to get out, the buzzing electricity sending a chill down my spine as I grip my door and grind my teeth.

Man, it hurts.

Am I going to make it through the day?

Maybe I can convince Sasha to close for me.

No…her husband just came home from a ten day shift. I wouldn’t say yes, either, if my husband just came home. In fact, he’s come home before, and I’ve said no before.

Asking her isn’t even fathomable, so I shove that thought down. You're working the closing shift, and there’s no if’s, and’s, or but’s.

The pain doesn’t subside, so I take a few more deep breaths, then make my way into the clinic.

There’s already a patient’s car waiting in the other lot out front. I can see their back red lights on.

I try not to wince as I open the clinic doors and step into the cool, drafty, humid air inside, leaving behind the Alabama spring heat. Since I’m from the north, I highly appreciate the air conditioner. Although I already know it won’t feel cool for long, so savor it while I can.

After punching in my ID, I head to the treatment floor, instantly overwhelmed by the bright lights and humming of machines. One’s blinking red and alarming on my side of the floor, and I quickly gulp down the eye pain and restart the test it must have failed.

“Hey, Red,” Sasha calls from the other side of the room, her voice both a comfort and a menace in my ear. Any sound is a menace in my ears right then. Vibrations echo against the pressure inside them, like pushing on a tight balloon I mentioned before.

“Hey,” I answered quickly, not feeling like talking. Talking takes more energy, and I don’t have a spare ounce to waste on conversation when I’m about to need it to do my job adequately while under duress.

“How was the game Thursday night?” Sasha asked.

“Good,” I replied. “They won again.” My daughters are on the same softball YMCA league team, and thus far they’re undefeated. Both my girls are playing wonderfully. Wren, my oldest daughter, is the best hitter on the team. And my little one CeeCee just started her girl-pitch games and is showing up. She is the youngest on the team, but far from the worst. Her bats can’t get far, but she can absolutely bring runners in, which is just as important as a hard bat.

“That’s awesome,” Sasha comes toward me and I wish she wouldn’t. It’s not that I don’t like Sasha—I love Sasha! She’s become like a grandmother to my kids this past year. The whole clinic has had a hand in helping raise my three kids, and I’m so blessed to work in a place where everyone is trustworthy enough to ask to help me. Because I need all the help I can get. But Sasha is loud and likes to talk. Something I just can’t do right now. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” I lie. I always lie. Not very Christian of me. Sometimes, the lie is as much to convince myself, though, as it is to convince everyone else. “My eye hurts a little bit,” I lie again. The pain isn’t a little bit. It’s enough to make me want to call in. Just the fact it makes me think about calling in means it's bad.

“You have something in it?” Sasha draws closer, ever the mother. Ever the one who wants to help. She’s so sweet and selfless that way.

“No, I don’t think so. It hurts to move a little bit.” I look away and start setting up more machines. “Maybe I scratched it or something.” My eye is definitely not scratched. But if it gets her to leave me alone in my misery…What’s it matter if my eye hurts anyway? There’s nothing to do about it. “I already took some Tylenol. It will feel better in a little bit.” Yeah, I took it an hour ago when I woke up. And it hasn’t helped yet. Neither has the coffee.

Tylenol never works.

“Hey,” I say, looking to move on from the topic of my pain. “How’d work go yesterday?” I know this will distract her. Of course, it also means she is going to start a whole conversation. At this point, talking about something else is way better than talking about the pain I’m trying to forget.

“Girl, let me tell you,” Sasha continues in her deep southern accent, starting a whole story about this and that and who did what and how all hell broke loose, as it always does.

Phew. Distraction initiated.

I love my Sasha to pieces. She is the soul of the clinic we all need. She is the piece of us that reminds us it never hurts to be kind or to stand up for people. I can’t appreciate her enough.

The day goes on, patients flooding the floor one by one, sometimes two by two. I stick needles into their arms, prepare machines, hold conversations. All while my eye hurts. It sounds silly, you might think. It’s just eye pain. Can’t be that bad, right? Well, I can’t blink without it hurting. Can’t look at machines or numbers or read my screens or patient’s accesses properly while it hurts to blink or look in any direction. Then, on top of that, just trying to live life while in pain is exhausting.

But I made it through the day. And my ache subsides some. It’s not as sharp when I look a certain way. The dullness behind the eyes cowers into a shadow of a pain by the end of my shift. I go home, change from work clothes, and just want to sleep. Sleep away the achiness. The pain.

Life doesn’t work that way when you’re a mom, though.

I should have thought about that when I had kids.

How selfish of me to birth my three wonderful babies knowing I’d one day have to put them through so much crap because of my illness. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

I’m laying on my bed, my youngest one next to me watching YouTube on her tablet. The stray dog we named Turkey because we found her on Thanksgiving snuggling into my legs in the middle of the bed with its mustache bed sheets wrinkling under her.

My aching eyes open and I grab my phone to text my mom, a realization hitting me. Did my eyes ever hurt when I was little?