sigh

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Want to take a guess?







???

Mom, I bet you know..................





Thursday night my eyes felt a bit scratchy, and when I woke up on Friday, the right one (the one with the sty) felt distinctly scratchy, and was blurry like there was goo on it. It got better after I was up, so it was nearly lunch time when I noticed it was red. The eye itself. Which it had not been, before.

Sigh.

So I called Health Service to make an appt, only to be told that I couldn't make an appt. Well sheesh. The last time I went in (two [2] weeks ago!) I was told to make an appt, and this time I was told I couldn't make an appt. Oy vey.

So I went in.

It was about 12:15, and they said I could have an appt with Dr. Agnes (as young Dr. C., who diagnosed the sty, was not available) at 2:45. Fine. Ok. Whatever.

Or maybe sooner. Right. Whatever. I had a book...............

So I went upstairs to wait.

Amazingly enough, she saw me at 1:20 or so. Yay.

As I had guessed, she goes by Dr. Agnes as her last name is something we, here in the American midwest, are likely to garble without extensive practice. She is young, and looks like a doctor (no-nonsense, rather than made up or fussily coiffed).

(Digression -- her eastern-European accent reminded me of Dr. T., whose name was also thought to be too much for our narrow concept of names. Dr. T. was the gynecologist at Health Service when I was a student. He was a big man, with a big voice, and big gestures. I liked him.

When ibuprofen first came out, he wanted me to try it for cramps in place of the codeine I had been using. He told me "Is for arthritis, but when people try it, they discover 'My god! Is good for uterus!'" :-)

And it was. But not good for headaches. At least not for my headaches.... Another story to be told another time....

In any case, we are disposed to like Dr. A., as she reminds us a bit of Dr. T.

End of digression.)

Dr. A. tells me that "we" (by whom I take her to mean "doctors at Health Service," but maybe she meant "doctors in general") are split 50/50 about giving antibiotics in this sort of case. She says that if I were to go to the eye clinic (which is where they would have sent me if I wear contacts), they would absolutely give me antibiotics. She decides to give me antibiotics. Systemic ones (azithromycin).

She also tells me that "80% of getting better" is hot compresses. "At least four times a day, at least 20 minutes each time."

!!!

My response was "you're kidding!"

She said "I know, easy for me to say, eh?"

Hmmm.

I mean.

Let's think this through.

I mean.

I don't know what is the official way to do hot compresses. Maybe there is some clever way to do it that is easy and ... dry? I did google a bit, and -- no joy.

So.

If a "hot compress" is a wet washcloth, well............. I mean. That thing has to be refreshed at least once a minute or it is no longer "hot." It drips. Majorly.

This means that not only is one tethered to a hot-water source, one must be somewhere where serious water leakage is a non-issue.

So.

I mean.

How exactly is this supposed to work?

Hunched over the sink? Hunched over the tub?

I have a rubber slide-over-the-tub-faucet rubber hose thingie which I use for bathing dogs, but is it clean enough to use to run a continuous stream of water over my eye? Would I still be hunched over the tub? Or lying down in the tub? If I decided it was clean enough?

I mean. ?????

So far, my happiest experience is sitting in the tub, on a towel, with the hot water dribbling constantly from the tap so it doesn't get cold, letting the washcloth drip all over me.

Get the cloth hot, let it drip all over me, repeat. For 20 minutes. The cloth stays (what I judge to be) "hot enough" for about one minute once it is sopping wet with hot water....

And then have a shower.

Perhaps there is some electrical thing I can plug in, which will keep a damp cloth hot, so I can lay comfortably in bed? I should probably try to find out........

In any case, Tony is keeping me good company. His characters are nice and laconic and sardonic and calm............. And getting to listen some more of Tony's story is a reward for being good and sitting uncomfortably in the tub for 20 minutes.............

Just last week we decided this tape/cd player could go. What would we ever need it for, after all, in this day of ipods? No one had used it for years..........

Well, it's the last tape player in the house, I think. The last "portable" cd player (it bulks more than the newest computer, so when we discuss portability.......)..........

Of the five books-on-tape, er, cd, that I got from the library on Friday, Tony's is the only one on tape. I did check the first two I picked up, to make sure they were cds, but then I quit checking.

I suppose I could be playing cds, really loud, on the study computer, and listening to them in the bathroom.

But I'm glad to have the volume knob handy, and glad to be able to switch media when necessary, without totally drying off and wandering into the other room! And I wanted to listen to *Tony*!

Thank goodness we can decide something can go, and still have it around at least a week later! There is something to be said for sloth......

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