“Hang up!” I scream at the Sirius XM automated answering system as I drive down the highway. “Just hang up this goddamn call!”
I know “she” isn’t programmed to understand what I’m saying. My chances of success are about as good as my frantic index finger stumbling across the right button on the dim screen on the dash. That blind poking at the screen got me into this mess.
Back up a few minutes. The podcast I’m listening to ends. The next episode doesn’t come on on. Something unrelated starts to play. I’m only a few minutes from the shop, so I’ll listen to the radio instead. I’ve been driving this truck for nearly 10 years. I know exactly which button to push for FM. I can do it with my eyes closed. Not quite. Because the screen is a hazy blur, I don’t touch FM. I touch Sirius. I don’t have that service and don’t want it. I jab at what I’m sure is the correct button for FM. Wrong again. I’ve jabbed at the correct button to call Sirius.
“Cancel,” I scream. “Cancel this fucking call.”
“You want to cancel your Sirius service? I’m sorry to hear that. What can we do to keep you as a valued customer?”
“No, no, no!”
More no’s and the automated assistant stops trying to make sense of my ravings. “Please hold just a moment as I transfer you to a customer assistance specialist who can help you,” she says. “This call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.” (Will that recording include my pathetic swearing?)
Somewhere on the left side of that screen, I know, somewhere a little south of center, I know, is the red “End Call” button. I can’t see red any more than I can see Santa Claus. But I believe. I know it’s there. And Christmas morning arrives just as the Sirius live operator comes on and my highway exit looms My finger magically touches the screen’s happy spot.
Exhausted, I pull into the parking lot of the shop I’m visiting. I feel helpless. Incompetent. Stupid. Especially cause that’s the second time I’ve done exactly the same Sirius thing in the past week or so.
I’m not sure exactly why my low-light eyesight deteriorated so quickly. My eye doctor documented a decline in both distance and reading vision. She postulated that the fluid imbalance that made my ankles and legs swell might have done the same to my lenses. A fluid imbalance caused somehow by the continuous antibiotic IV infusion dripping into my left arm. “Let’s see if it doesn’t get better when you stop the IV,” she offered.
I think it’s something else. I think it’s a recurrence of the central serous retinopathy (CSR) that robbed the clarity from my left eye 15 years ago. A recurrence of the CSR that attacked my right eye two years ago.
The symptoms are familiar. Light everywhere is just a bit dimmer. In dark rooms or with low-resolution screens, it’s a lot dimmer. Everything is hazy, foggy. Forget about reading a book. All the letters swim around. No amount of light brings them to shore. And there’s the return of the white-car-turned-green phenomenon. (More, much more, on that in a later post.)
Steroids use is one of the two proven risk factors for CSR. I’m not letting that happen again. I’ve taken out a million-dollar ad campaign warning all my doctors and nurses and pharmacists that prescribing, injecting, or dosing me with any steroid compound is punishable by a swift left hook to the jaw. If I can accurately make out the jaw.
Despite the dozens of meds I’ve been given these past months, I’ve kept a very close eye on – er, let’s try a different phrase – I’ve made damn sure no steroids snuck in. I’m confident that’s not the culprit.
The other probable cause: stress. I’ve had a few. Two back surgeries, a surgical site abscess with a staph infection, an implanted tube that runs from my upper arm through some major arteries to a spot about an inch from my heart, the daily care of that tube and the (possibly eyesight-robbing) antibiotics that flow through it, a bout of unexplained dizziness, numbness throughout most of my right leg, a return of much of the pain that led me to surgery initially, and a scan finding a suspicious nodule on my thyroid. (At least a follow-up scan found the nodule wasn’t cancer or anything troublesome.)
I try to stay calm. I need to try harder. I snap at Linda and the kids. I dwell on the numbness and the pain and the tube.
So I’m left to stumble on through the fog for another week or so. The IV is supposed to come out in six days. Then I have to “give it some time” for my body fluids to reach a new equilibrium. If not, I’ll see the retina specialist for the scans, maybe another injection into my eye (Xanax definitely needed before that happens again), and maybe more laser zaps to seal the leaks.
Shit!
I’m not a patient patient.
Up next. The joys of post-surgical brain fog. (Whippets anyone?)