At this point, I’m not sure exactly what I need to be doing to keep this from happening. The doctor thinks a major problem is dehydration. Because the eyes are, apparently, the last part of the body to be hydrated (consider the pecking order that includes kidneys, liver and so on), my failure to remain adequately hydrated means that my eyes will be especially susceptible to injury. This includes even the abuse our corneas take during REM sleep. Combine that with the dry air of heaters during this winter season (it’s worth nothing that my eye problems began when the heaters came on in October) and you get what I’ve got.
An accidental scratch precipitated this most recent episode, which is both depressing and not-so-depressing. “Not-so-depressing” because this may mean that everything else I’m doing: the eye drops, the eye ointment, the fish oil pills, the water … is working. “Depressing” because it just does to show that you can’t ward off everything, and even if the eye is adequately hydrated, a freak occurrence can still pop up and set things back.As such, I’m taking three classes off (Thursday, tonight, and Wednesday) out of my usual rotation, which will put me back on the mat Thursday night. I’d argue that my eye is back to about 90% right now—after a setback Saturday likely caused by spending too much time at work under the fluorescents on Friday. Part of the time I’m taking is for healing, to be sure. But part of it is plainly psychological. I just need some time to pass so that I don’t feel as if every time I step on the mat, something unpleasant and painful is going to happen to my eye.
It may be superstitious, but four separate incidents in five months is almost enough to make me break out the chicken blood and start dancing around like Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart to keep this madness from happening again. So instead, I’ll wait until Thursday.
Aside from the eye injury from last Wednesday, it wasn’t the greatest training session for me. I’m still trying to get my wind back from the winter holidays, and after the eye thing, I was rolling pretty defensively for the rest of the night (the injury happened within the first ten minutes of class). That made me a little touchy, and some of what happened and what was said in and during subsequent rolls got on my nerves so much that I actually had a dream Friday night in which Rodrigo was trying to reel me in from some rage or other. It’s been said that a high school senior is older in many ways than a college freshman, and I think something similar can be said about first year blue belts. And Wednesday, in a variety of unfortunate ways, I got that sensation in spades.
In any event, everything that happens is an opportunity to know something you didn’t know before (whether you wanted to know or not). So I’ll consider both the good and the ill of last week well-filed away for further reference.
