Vile Jelly

How did I spend yesterday afternoon, judging by the above picture?

a) Enjoying conversation and cocaine at my local drug parlour?
b) Watching Fantasia Eroticopious with the curtains drawn for the umpteenth time?
c) Waiting to be seen at Bristol Eye Hospital, with pupils dilated by a stinging liquid administered on arrival?

Those who know me well will know that c) is correct. (Thursday is of course my Fantasia Eroticopious day - what's yours?)

It all started brightly, with a routine contact lens and eye check at my local Specsavers. The lens test was excellent - no deterioration at all over the last two years. I remember the optician asked me how I was feeling, and I replied breezily, "Oh, just coasting gently towards the grave, you know," and we both chuckled at what seemed a very distant prospect.

[I was also inspired to ask - a random bit of research - how many people reading eye tests pronounced 'Z' the American way these days. She said that a surprising number did so, though not yet quite 50%. I thought this interesting information, as mostly we hear the letter in the context of set phrases (JayZ, Gen Z, etc.) rather than in the splendid isolation of an optician's chart.]

The eye test was to have been done by a different optician, but we never got as far as looking at charts, because he found something sufficiently alarming in the initial retinal exam that he packed me off to the hospital for a same-day emergency referral.

The hospital is, luckily, an easy walk from my house, so I went in after a hasty lunch, and was ushered into the A&E ward, where I was fully braced to see every other eyeball hanging cartoonishly from its socket, but actually everyone looked perfectly normal. A sign noted that people were seen on the basis of urgency rather than order of arrival, so I was as alarmed as I was relieved to be taken off almost immediately by a nurse - but this was just to have the dilating liquid, it turned out. That was the first of several medical encounters over the course of the afternooon, each with a member of staff of greater seniority than the last.

Finally I was told that my optician was right. There's a tear in my retina, which could cause liquid to escape and build up pressure, putting the retina in danger of becoming entirely detached. I also had lattice deterioration (yes, I had to look it up, too).

That was the bad news. The good news was that my body was falling apart in ways that more or less cancelled each other out. The deteriorating lattice had formed a kind of seal, preventing the liquid from the torn retina from causing any serious issue. The doctor explained this while performing kirigami with a tissue that was standing in for my eyeball. It seemed a rather fragile defence against blindness.

For a while, they debated whether to laser me that very day or to book me in for actual surgery down the line, but as it was almost time for Pointless they ended up labelling it a chronic condition and sent me home, with an admonition to expect an Outpatient appointment shortly.

If it's broke in two equal and opposite ways, don't fix it.