Home on the Range!

After an eye scare Friday, and clarification Saturday, I hit the driving range for the first time since my Ramsay Hunt attack in late April.

Friday I was driving home near the VA hospital, and my eye started feeling very scratchy. My left eye started to water, so my right eye began to as well. (They're in the same union.)

"Don't be Mr. Macho," I had been admonished. "If it hurts, go see the doctors during the week, while they're open."

Of course, I had waited too long: the eye clinic closed at noon. So I hied to the Urgent Care room, and sat for three hours. The M.D. on call--who had been one of the people who saw me in the ward when I was there--remembered me. "Oh, you had such a bad case of Ramsay Hunt," she said in her lilting Indian accent.

"I was Exhibit A in a lot of white-coated Show and Tell, that's for sure," I said.

Her diagnosis was, something bad was going on in my eye, but come in the next morning to see the eye doctor.

Next morning the eye doctor took a gander. "Not much wrong," she said, contradicting the Urgent Care doctor. She proceeded to rout out my eyelids with a cotton swab to get built-up mucus and grit out, turning them a bright red.

"Don't wear the patch too much," she admonished, "because it breeds bacteria."

"What about the Speedo swim goggles I've been using?"

"Same problem," she responded. "If you want to wash your eyelids to get rid of summer sweat and dust, use a q-tip with baby shampoo." Of course, no tears. Why hadn't I thought of that? For that matter, why hadn't they told me earlier? (The leftover soap also cleaned the oil off my nose, making the Breath-Rite stick all night.)

I drove home, much relieved.

On to Golf

So, when my pal telephoned and asked if I wanted to go to the driving range, I leaped at the chance.

It felt good to be out in the warm afternoon air, splitting a bucket.

I only took three clubs, and I sincerely tried to slow everything down. I have a tendency to sway a lot, so one pro suggested I stand with all my weight on my left foot, and just my right toe on the ground.

One-eyed, one-legged...there was a song about that, wasn't there?

Actually, I made pretty good contact much of the time. My shots weren't straight, but they were out there a ways. And when I remembered to tuck my right elbow in...I hit what I was aiming at. At least that time.