Doctor My Eyes

There I was on another typical day, typing another typical blog post that no one ever typically reads when out of the corner of my left eye I caught sight of something decidedly atypical, something decidedly moving!

It appeared dark black, the size of a quarter, and was scampering rapidly all about the left side of me.  I realized that it was either a fly, a runaway proton, or a spider, and although I'm fine with the first two options, the prospect of the third caused me to give forth a high-pitched sound in the approximate nature of:

"AHHHHHHHHH!!!"

as I flayed wildly about with a rolled up newspaper, calling out "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" 

You see, I really hate spiders. They are proof positive that there is either no God or the one we've got should have been forcibly bound and gagged before he finished the finer points of Creation.

But after routing about  a bit I discovered there was nothing there.  An optical illusion perhaps? A stain on my contact lens, to go along with the one on my character? Had the object vanished into a parallel universe, one in which I hopefully own better property?

I returned to typing, but before long so did the menacing dark moving object to my left.  And so did the high-pitched sound in the approximate nature of:

"AHHHHHHHHH!!!"

But after two or three more near pseudo arachnid-induced heart attacks, I finally began to catch on.  There was no spider, there was no fly, there was no errant proton anywhere to be seen. The dark black object was rather in my eye itself.  

This then would be a job for my eye doctor, Dr. Mervin Vertbaum.

"Better this way, Perry, or better this way?" asked Dr. Vertbaum. 

"What does that have to do with the dark spot in my eye, Doctor?" I asked.

"Nothing. We're required to say that by law."

"Oh, I see. But what do I have?"

"You have a floater,  a deposit within the eye's viteous humor."

"But I thought all floaters were small, kind of like Donald Trump's hands."

"No, they can be quite large as well. Yours is the size of a Buick, albeit one of their sportier models."

"Well, how long will it take until it goes away?"

"Oh, it doesn't go away, Perry. You'll have it for life."

Have it for life? It's amazing how casually doctors tell older people they'll have something for life assuming we're totally fine with that since life's not such a long term proposition anymore anyway!

"But ... but it's very annoying, Doctor."

"Oh, you'll get used to it, Perry.  That is, assuming the floater doesn't scatter into hundreds of multiple pieces in which case it will look like you're perpetually traveling through the Milky Way."

"What?!  Well, there must be some fix for that!"

"Oh, sure, there it."

"Thank goodness! What is it?"

"Keep your eyes shut, for God's sakes!"  

And so, let's add eye floaters to my current list of life maladies, which includes a spine shaped like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, shrinkage in physical stature certain to one day surely render me the limbo champion of Havertown PA, and white blotches on my arms, face, and hands providing me the tony appearance as though someone were trying to bleach me and just ran out of clorox.

Well, at least the floater isn't really a spider.  Actually it's starting to look something more like a musical note dancing in front of my eyes the way musical notes sometime appear on screen in a movie to show that the protagonist composer is experiencing great inspiration.

So that's it. I'm to spend the rest of my life watching Amadeus.

"AHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Sanctuary!  Sanctuary!

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