It seems as if the weather was not obstacle enough to my training goals for December.
I took an ill-fated nap late Christmas morning in Tucson after a perfectly wonderful Christmas morning of in-laws, good coffee, fruit salad and gift-giving. I woke up after about two hours and decided that I had enough time for maybe another hour of sleep before it would be time to start helping out for dinner. There were going to be about 12 people over for Christmas dinner, so there was plenty of food to be prepared. I hadn't been so relaxed in weeks. I was very looking forward to 40 more winks.
That extra hour turned out to be a bad idea. I woke up with a searing, slashing pain in my left eye, a classic Bunuelesque Chien Andalu moment I knew all too well.
I'm much better now, 1000 times better, some four days later - which seems to be the standard duration for this eye jones I've get. My eye was swollen - far more than is usually the case. And, of course, the strangest part is that there was no poke or scratch from outside. I went to sleep. I woke up. Pow!
I finally went to Urgent Care where the doctor told me it was one of the worst eyes he'd seen. I don't know if that was just a way of saying "pretty bad" or not. But he said that there were abrasions all over the cornea (rather than one line or slash as had happened in other situations).
He gave me some antibiotics and some pain medicine. A very good clinic, I should say, though not surprising for the Tucson foothills. Incidentally, you can now get a sizeable spread in the foothills of Tucson for less than half a million. If I could move everything and everyone connected with Gracie Barra Seattle to the old Pueblo, I'd almost consider moving back.
That and the fact that the desert air of Tucson and the winter-time central heating system are probably what wrought havoc with my eye. There was probably some eyestrain involved as well, and not taking my eye drops before the nap (I never nap). I was up late the night before working for the Daily Planet, and the leaving had been stressful enough. So there were a host of factors probably involved. But it was a pretty crummy time to be walking around, half-blind with an eye that looks like it's growing a lip under it. Fortunately, everybody was tolerant about it and the food, as usual, was fantastic.
I'm headed to the specialist tomorrow to hopefully get some Big Picture view on what's going on. Hopefully, the fix is something as simple as staying hydrated, using a humidifier when possible and using my eyedrops whenever I'm going to sleep - even for a quick nap. We'll see what Dr. Casey, opthamologist of the newly Mike Holmgren-free Seattle Seahawks, has to say.
