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Tuesday is my most crucial day at work. It’s the day when I transform myself from a cute administrative professional into a (still cute) digital project monger and spend hours looking for project tenders to bid for the company. As a consultancy company, our wages, welfare, fortune, and life depend on it, and as a devoted employee (who desperately needs money to satiate my passion for travel and donuts), I make myself unavailable for any other business than doing tender research every Tuesday morning to 2 PM.
Last Tuesday started as usual and I got caught in my weekly voracious tender forage (cheesus, look at those fancy pants words I used in this sentence. Let’s take a minute and appreciate my effort). At around 9 AM I noticed that my vision was a bit blurry, I thought my eyeglasses were dirty so I went to the washroom to wash it. Not long after, I notice that there were a unicorn butt-hole like circles (round flashers) inside my peripheral vision. I took a quick break (and uploaded a post on my socmed about seeing unicorn butt-hole without the influence of Meth or Fentanyl). Surprisingly, I got more than a couple suggestions to have my eyes check by a pro or rush myself to the ER right away.
I ignored them…
Around 10 AM that unicorn butt-hole started to throb like a neon sign of a busy brothel in De Wallen. I called 811 while trying my best to continue reading my computer screen. 811 is Canadian health line, you can call them, tell them your symptoms, and they will suggest to you what to do. It’s like having a talking WebMD but with much better diagnostic. If they think you need to see a doctor, they will tell you the nearest one in your area.
These photos show how it looked like for my eyes when I was having the migraine attack.
811 is the 1st thing you do before you take your hypochondriac self to the ER and cramp the place for no good reason (ER in Quebec is always full and it can take hours before you get your turn to see a doctor). After listening carefully to my symptoms, the nice officer that handled my call that day suggested me to see an optometrist right away and she gave me 3 numbers of the nearest optometrist. I called them and each of them told me to go right away to the ER after hearing my symptoms.
ER? Ow puh-leeeaze! ER is for the weak, baby!
I hung up and continued working. I just didn’t feel like going to the ER. I went there for someone not long ago and I still remembered how full, slow, and long the process at ER was.
At 11 AM my vision was getting worse and worse, I couldn’t read my texts and couldn’t see well, and finally I lost my vision (well, sort of, it was really blurry to the point I couldn’t see shapes) along with my cool, and coffee (I nudged it off the table when I was panicking). I finally rushed myself to the ER with the same scale of panickness as if I was having labor of triplets from each of eye sockets.
I went to the ER of St. Sacrement hospital and got treated in under an hour, which was surprising and alarming at the same time. Surprising because ER in Quebec is famous to make you wait for hours before you get to to see the Dr, alarming because if you got treated rightaway, it could mean that you’d probably have something really serious going on.
Worst case scenarios indicated by seeing flashers are glaucoma, blood clot, stroke/seizure, or detached retina (I didn’t even know if retina can suddenly detach), all which could lead to permanent loss of sight. The thought of I might lose my sight scared the bejesus out of me. To determine if I had (or had not) one of those problems, I had to undergo few stages of comprehensive eye examinations.
Here on the left were the eye examinations I had (in order). After went thru those multiple examinations, the ER transferred me to the
ophthalmologist for further examinationOphthalmoscopy/fundoscopy (retinal examination)
An Ophthalmoscopy is an examination of the back part of the eye, including the condition of your retina, optic disc, choroid (the layer of blood vessels and connective tissue between the white or the eye and retina), and blood vessels.
Now, this is where things get a bit uncomfortable… (an omnious music would fit here)..
Apparently, there are few methods of Ophthalmoscopy, the one I had was Slit Lamp method. First, I must tell you that the doctor who took care of me was cute, like a-boyband-member-has-grown-up cute, if you know what I mean. I might would’ve probably had an instant crush on him if he hadn’t probed me in the eyes with his instruments a minute after he introduced himself.
The doctor gave me eye drops to dilate my pupil (when the eye drops start to kick in, my eyes were all pupil, no iris, and I had a terrible vision that lasted for the rest of the day). Then, he pressed (yes, pressed) a handheld lense right against my friggin eyeballs, and he asked me to see straight to it while he lit up this blue light with the strength of a thousand lightnings around my eyeballs. It felt like having a staring competition against a laser disco ball. It was extremely uncomfortable, my tears shed automatically and uncontrollably. That cute doctor made me cry more tears in a minute than my ex when he single-sidedly ended-up our innocent 3 years relationship.
While handing me a tissue, the doctor nonchalantly said a comment that left me dumbfounded; "well well, it is done now, you can stop crying, and imagine this, I have to do this thing more than 50 times a day."
Wow, wow, wow, hold on right there you cute prick!! There are huuuuuge differences between doing something to and have something being done to you. Imagine if a mohel (Jewish penis tailor) said the same thing to you after he performed your circumcision. I bet you’d like to hit his face with your well-trimmed d*ck.
Anyway, after I went through that hell for eyes and back, I got my verdict: I had what they called as retinal migraine. Heck, I didn’t even know retinas can a have migraine too!
The doctor said that there’s not much I could do about this but to keep up my basic health care in general. Unless the symptoms happen more than once, then I should see a neurologist. I was suggested to take the rest of the day easy, no telly, no phone, no computer. Well, no sh*te! I could barely see anything anyway. I even had to ask the security at the front door to dial Nico’s number from my phone because my phone looked like nothing but a black blurry brick to me. (Pssst, is it just me or most of you also trusting the number of your important emergency contacts solely on your phone and not on your brain?).
At the end of the day, I was exhausted and glad at the same time that it was not something major. The result also said that my retina and eye balls are in a good condition and there is no glaucoma or any other eye disease present. I also feel grateful for Canadian healthcare system. All the examinations I had today cost me nothing.
I must’ve looked rather disturbing with my eyes wide open but unfocused, with dilated pupils and yellow cornea. Plus, the melted eyeshadows and eyeliner smeared all over my face giving me a whore-ish sick looking panda face. I sat down as I was waiting for Nico to pick me up from the hospital and I thought; what would it be if I can never see his face again.. that thought breaks my heart.
Oh la la retinal migraine, la petite marde!