On the 14th floor of Wills Eye Hospital, outside the wall of windows, the city of Philadelphia held the promise of a beautiful early September morning.
What did inside hold?
As I waited to be called for my appointment with my neuro-opthalmologist, I tried to determine what I was feeling . . . and what I would allow myself to think.
There was the nervousness residing on my chest, a heaviness I could not shake off. In my purse was a list of ten questions I had accumulated since my last visit and I was afraid I wouldn’t get them all answered. My doctor is wonderful, but he is very busy, with me being just one of thirty patients on his schedule on this day. The anxiety could not, would not, be willed away.
Additionally, there is always a little fear that, even though my vision has not changed, they will find something wrong, or more wrong than usual, I should say. You don’t wake up blind without warning and not be viscerally aware that life can change in the opening of an eye. My stomach held the fear. It did not lie in the pit like a boulder, instead it tumbled and rumbled; I was sure the other people in the waiting room could hear it.
While these physical pleasantries (not) were occurring, the thoughts in my head were having a party to rival the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl Championship Ring Ceremony.
Don’t get your hopes up. It’s just a checkup, there is still no treatment.
There could be a trial coming.
If there is a trial, don’t get too excited.
It could take forever to happen and you’ll probably get the placebo.
Unfortunately, most of us have had a 14th floor. I am sure many are nonplussed by it all, taking it in stride. I envy them which is unfortunate. As you can imagine, there’s not much room on the elevator going up for the green-eyed monster, what with all the thoughts and feelings.
Time stands still on the 14th floor. The buses and cabs and people on the street below do not exist, your own car in the parking garage seems like a dream you had a few weeks ago even though you have just spent the last 90 minutes belted into its passenger seat. Your dirty coffee mug in the sink at home and the load of laundry waiting to be done are not real, they exist in another dimension.
I know that this too shall pass, that as I walk through this waiting area to exit the physician’s office, every bit of this internal activity will be gone. Just like the seat I had inhabited in the waiting room will be filled by another patient, new tenants will occupy the spaces left empty inside me, who they are depends on what the doctor says.
For now, as the sun shines high above the City of Brotherly Love, I, on the 14th floor, wait to see.
#SisterRain #ALittleSightALotOfHeart #LegallyBlindWriter #Blind #BlindnessIsASpectrum #LegallyBlind #LowVision #VisuallyImpaired #OpticNeuropathy #VisionLoss
